Building an entity data model for Northwind
Practical applications usually need to work with data in a relational database or another data store. In this chapter, we will define an entity data model for the Northwind
database stored in SQLite. It will be used in most of the apps that we create in subsequent chapters.
Although macOS includes an installation of SQLite by default, if you are using Windows or a variety of Linux then you might need to download, install, and configure SQLite for your operating system. Instructions to do so can be found in Chapter 11, Working with Databases Using Entity Framework Core. In that chapter, you will also find instructions for installing the dotnet-ef
tool, which you will use to scaffold an entity model from an existing database.
Good Practice: You should create a separate class library project for your entity data models. This allows easier sharing between backend web servers and frontend desktop, mobile, and Blazor clients.
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