Alex James, a program manager on the EF team, has been posting a series of EF tips that just keeps getting better and better. Most of the tips revolve around using EF today with some nods to the upcoming EF4 in Visual Studio 2010.

He's up to Tip #26, a favorite of mine which is how to define a foreign key without hitting the database. Technically the post is about using stub entities (Tip 26 - How to avoid database queries using Stub Entities) which if you ATTACH to the context before attaching to a new entity, you won't have to worry about EF trying to insert data that already exists. Another way around this problem is to create an EntityReference EntityKey, which is a path I have chosen and written about frequently.

Alex's Tips series began with a tip on Relationships in late February, so the installments have been coming rapidly. His second tip made a mention of my own book on EF, Programming Entity Framework, so of course I really liked that one. :-)

Check out his blog and also a pointer to a new EF team blogger, Craig Lee. Craig is not new to the team, just to the blogosphere.