Which C# programming IDE is best for connecting to MariaDB using a technique similar to the one in Entity Framework?

The most productive IDE for C# personally has been Visual Studio. JetBrains’ Rider IDE is now coming along, and I am pretty sure they will do a fantastic job. But subjectively, I have found Visual Studio to be extremely productive across at least 18 different types of C# projects. (console, win forms, asp. Net web forms, mvc, web api, windows services, libraries, vs plug-ins, office adding, win phone apps, azure apps, classic web services, wcf, and the list goes on) As you can see, this is agnostic of you using Entity Framework or any database. When you use a database technology along with C#, we go into the realm of IDE plug-ins and extensions that support these databases. From a C# perspective, it doesn't care about MS SQL, or Oracle or Maria dB. Where it matters is, can the IDE give you an integrated experience to connect to the database, see all the artifacts (tables, indexes, stored procs) etc? And in this regard, MS SQL server is probably the best integrated option you'll find with Visual Studio. Simply because Microsoft owns both of it. So they can integrate a lot better. In addition to that, Visual Studio has a dedicated sql project type, that is extremely good for a MS Sql Server. No other database technology enjoys this first class integration. The last part to your question is Entity Framework (EF) . Think of entity framework as a language translator (over simplified but you get the point). From C# to an underlying database. (MS SQL, ORACLE, MYSQL etc.) Because Microsoft owns both C# and MS SQL, and EF, they translate C# to MS SQL the best. (The MS SQL provider for EF) EF has started growing in stature for Oracle and MySql, but people seem to hit weird errors occasionally. Maria dB is essentially MySql under the covers. So you can continue to use the EF designer and work with MySql under the covers, but the experience may not be as good as MS SQL. Overall you can continue using Visual Studio for C# with EF agnostic of the underlying database. read less