Welcome to the Entity Framework Beta 3. In addition to supporting the production release of the .NET Framework 3.5, the ADO.NET Entity Framework Beta 3 has the following new features and improvements since the Beta 2 release:

Performance improvements
 

• Much quicker object query execution
• Simpler generated SQL
• Faster view generation

Easier disconnected operation

The ADO.Net Entity Framework Tools Dec 07 CTP contains a preview release of the ADO.NET Entity Designer which enables users to visually design model and mappings using Visual Studio 2008 RTM. This release also incorporates fixes to several bugs and includes many features requested by customers. The designer in this CTP has limited functionality only supports a subset of the ADO.NET Entity Framework.

Synchronization Services lets you synchronize data from disparate sources over two-tier, N-tier, and service-based architectures. Instead of only replicating a database and its schema, the Synchronization Services application programming interface (API) provides a set of components to synchronize data between data services and a local store. Applications are increasingly used on mobile clients, such as portable computers and devices, that do not have a consistent or reliable network connection to a central server.