The ADO.NET Entity Framework is a set of data-access APIs for the Microsoft .

NET Framework, similar to the Java Persistence API, targeting the version of ADO.NET that ships with .NET Framework 4.0. ADO.NET Entity Framework is included with .NET Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010, released in April 2010. An Entity Framework Entity is an object which has a key representing the primary key of a logical datastore entity. A conceptual Entity Data Model (Entity-relationship model) is mapped to a datastore schema model. Using the Entity Data Model, the Entity Framework allows data to be treated as entities independently of their underlying datastore representations. Entity SQL, a SQL-like language, serves for querying the Entity Data Model (instead of the underlying datastore). Similarly, LINQ extension LINQ to Entities provides typed querying on the Entity Data Model. Entity SQL and LINQ to Entities queries are converted internally into a Canonical Query Tree which is then converted into a query understandable to the underlying database