Download ADO.NET Entity Framework 4.2 Beta 1

Version 4.2 of ADO.NET Entity Framework is bound to be expected eagerly by those customers that deployed EF 4.1 Update 1 and stumbled across a bug that Microsoft missed during testing.

For the time being however, only the first Beta development milestone of Entity Framework 4.2 is available for download and testing.

As the Redmond company already promised, Entity Framework 4.2 is designed to deal with the problem introduced by Entity Framework 4.1 Update 1.

“When we released ‘EF 4.1 Update 1’ we introduced a bug that affects third party EF providers using a generic class for their provider factory implementation, things such as WrappingProviderFactory<TProvider>. We missed this during our testing and it was reported by some of our provider writers after we had shipped,” revealed a member of the ADO.NET Entity Framework Team.

“This bug is blocking some third party providers from working with ‘EF 4.1 Update 1’ and the only workaround for folks using an affected provider is to ask them to remain on EF 4.1.”

There aren’t any additional changes in version 4.2 save for the bug fix. But at the same time, the evolution from 4.1 to 4.2 represents a shift in the versioning strategy for EF.

“Obviously a single bug fix wouldn’t normally warrant bumping the minor version, but we also wanted to take the opportunity to get onto the semantic versioning path rather than calling the release ‘EF 4.1 Update 2’,” the ADO.NET Entity Framework Team representative added.

If Entity Framework 4.2 Beta 1 testing goes well, the software giant plans to release the RTM Build by the end of September 2011, although a specific launch deadline has yet to be provided.

For the time being early adopters can grab Entity Framework 4.2 Beta 1 via NuGet as the EntityFramework.Preview package.

ADO.NET Entity Framework 4.1 Update 1 is available for download here.