The Other Way Around – Database First Approach

In Chapter 1, Kickstart - Introduction to Entity Framework Core, we were exposed to the Entity Framework (EF) Code-First approach, which might not be useful in all scenarios. We need a provision to reverse engineer existing databases using EF Core, which guides us in performing migrations and helps us in retaining model changes that won't be lost during migrations.

When EF was first released, it supported only the database-first approach, which means we could use the framework only on the existing database. As opposed to the Code-First approach discussed in the previous chapter, the database-first approach will be widely used while we decide to use EF in the existing system.

The topics we will cover here are:

• Preparing the database
• Creating a new project
• Installing Entity Framework
• Reverse engineering the database
• Registering context in services (.Net Core DI)
• Performing CRUD operations