Using Microsoft's ADO.NET Entity Framework, developers can create an entity relationship model of the database (ie SQL Server) inside Visual Studio 2008.

The ADO.NET Entity Framework is a framework for providing services on data models from Microsoft. It is a new way to build the data access layer of Windows or web applications.

The Entity Framework is a data-access technology that builds on top of ADO.NET 2.0. It uses the Entity Relational Model (the "Entity Data Model" in Microsoft's terminology) to create conceptual models ...

The Entity Client Data Provider enables you to execute queries against the Entity Data Model using syntax and approach that is similar to the way you use your ADO.Net Provider.