EF Core: Migrations and Data Access Patterns

Entity Framework Core is the primary ORM for .NET, and its surface area extends well beyond basic CRUD. This collection examines EF Core from a practitioner’s perspective: migration design, model configuration, performance patterns, and the architectural decisions that determine whether your data layer stays maintainable as systems grow.

EF Core Plugins: When Migrations Go Wrong

EF Core’s entity discovery is thorough by design. In a plugin architecture, that thoroughness becomes a liability: navigation properties pull plugin entities into the host migration, creating shared schema ownership that breaks plugin isolation, causes schema drift, and makes clean plugin uninstalls impossible.