Generic Repository With EF 4.1 what is the point

Question

As i dig deeper in to the DbContext, DbSet and associated interfaces, I am wondering why you would need to implement a separate \"Generic\" Repository around these implement

Answer 1

I am struggling with the same issues, and mockability for unit testing of the EF layers is important. But I ran across this great article which explains how to set up the EF 4.1 DbContext to be mockable by making sure your derived DbContext implemented a generic interface and exposes IDbSet rather than DbSet's. Since I am using a Database First approach, because our database already exists, I simply modified the T4 templates used to generate my derived DbContext to generate it to return IDbSet interfaces, as well as derive from my generic interface. That way the entire thing can be easily mocked, and you don't need to implement your own Unit Of Work or repository pattern. Just write your service code to consume your generic interface, and when you go to unit test it, just mock the generic interface with specific test data and you are good to go.

http://refactorthis.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/mock-faking-dbcontext-in-entity-framework-4-1-with-a-generic-repository/