C# – Entity Data Model Wizard Too Slow (SQL Database)

LINQ to SQL only supports 1 to 1 mapping of database tables, views, sprocs and functions available in Microsoft SQL Server. It's a great API to use for quick data access construction to relatively well designed SQL Server databases. LINQ2SQL was first released with C# 3.0 and .Net Framework 3.5.

LINQ to Entities (ADO.Net Entity Framework) is an ORM (Object Relational Mapper) API which allows for a broad definition of object domain models and their relationships to many different ADO.Net data providers. As such, you can mix and match a number of different database vendors, application servers or protocols to design an aggregated mash-up of objects which are constructed from a variety of tables, sources, services, etc. ADO.Net Framework was released with the .Net Framework 3.5 SP1.

This is a good introductory article on MSDN: Introducing LINQ to Relational Data

For those using Entity Framework 6 and up, if you want to view the output SQL in Visual Studio (like I did) you have to use the new logging/interception functionality.

Adding the following line will spit out the generated SQL (along with additional execution-related details) in the Visual Studio output panel:

using (MyDatabaseEntities context = new MyDatabaseEntities())
{
    context.Database.Log = s => System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(s);
    // query the database using EF here.
}

More information about logging in EF6 in this nifty blog series: http://blog.oneunicorn.com/2013/05/08/ef6-sql-logging-part-1-simple-logging/

Note: Make sure you are running your project in DEBUG mode.