In case you missed an important news, Oracle just released ODAC 12c Release 3 to production.  The new ODAC release is now available for download from OTN. New features include Entity Framework 6, Code First, Code First Migrations, .NET Framework 4.5.2 certification, and managed ODP.NET XML DB, Kerberos, and more streamlined distributed transaction support. Try it today for free!

• Download
• Data Sheet
• Video: Getting Started with ODP.NET, Managed Driver
• Documentation

In ODAC 12c Release 3 and Oracle Database 12c, .NET developers have many more features to increase productivity and ease development. This two-part webinar series explores the following new features introduced in recent releases: Entity Framework Code First and Code First Migrations; NuGet installation; schema compare tools; ODP.NET, Managed Driver; multitenant container database management; ODP.NET application high availability; and ease of .NET development features. Oracle product managers will present these sessions with code and tool demonstrations using Visual Studio 2013. Register for each webcast to attend.

• What’s New for Oracle and .NET – Part 1 – Tuesday, January 13, 2015 12 P.M. EST (9 A.M. PST)
• What’s New for Oracle and .NET – Part 2 – Wednesday, January 14, 2015 12 P.M. EST (9 A.M. PST)

This is a great news for all Microsoft developers who work with Oracle.  There has been one commercial product that supported Code First and Code First Migrations on Oracle for a while, but it seemed to me that Oracle should provide the same support as well, just like other RDBMS providers do.  This release makes it much easier to create and maintain Oracle .NET applications that use Entity Framework.  Also, it is backwards compatible with Oracle 11g, as answered here.

You can read entire newsletter here.

Enjoy.