Book excerpt: Prior to .NET 3.5, we (developers) often used to write ADO.NET code or Enterprise Data Access Block to save or retrieve application data from the underlying database. We used to open a connection to the database, create a DataSet to fetch or submit the data to the database, convert data from the DataSet to .NET objects or vice-versa to apply business rules. This was a cumbersome and error prone process. Microsoft has provided a framework called "Entity Framework" to automate all these database related activities for your application.