Redmond wants to improve key database library, but then why not just use Dapper? Tim Anderson Tue 19 Jan 2021 // 15:05 UTC Share Copy Microsoft's next major version of its Entity Framework (EF) database library for .NET will have long-term support and attempt to match rival Dapper for performance – an attempt, said senior program manager Jeremy Likness, that "will likely not be fully achieved." Entity Framework is Microsoft's Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) library, and sits on top of ADO.Net, a lower-level database library. The theory behind using an ORM is that it relieves developers of much of the tedious and error-prone work of writing code for CRUD (Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete) operations against databases. Using an ORM, developers can work with classes representing their business objects and ask the ORM to save and retrieve them as needed.