Entity Framework Core 8, set to release in November 2023, brings several new features and improvements to existing features of EF Core 7. These notable features include support for raw SQL queries for unmapped types, lazy-loading improvements, and support for TimeOnly and DateOnly SQL Server data types. Lazy-loading works only until the DbContext used to execute the no-tracking query is disposed of, while lazy-loading properties on un-tracked queries work for lazy-loading with and without proxies. The DateOnly and TimeOnly data types are now natively supported by EF Core 8 for SQL Server, and native-to-EF Core mappings used instead of DateTime and TimeSpan mappings in previous versions. EF Core 8 introduces an opt-out feature to eagerly load only specific navigation properties, and you can download the latest preview of EF Core 8, released on 21st February 2023, as a NuGet package.
