Does Entity Framework 6.1 support an XML data type natively?

Question

Some RDBMSs (including SQL Server) support XML columns. I'd prefer not mapping such a column to the string data type. Does Entity Framework 6.1 support XML natively in any way?

More specifically, can I map an xml column to one of the XML data types of .NET (such as XElement or XmlElement )? Does Entity Framework support XQuery that is integrated into normal LINQ queries and is translated to SQL queries?

Answer 1

No, only mapping it to string and then having to stream it back in to an XML document.

There is a long thread back and forth with Microsoft about doing this in EF4, 5, or 6, but it looks like they researched it and decided to punt.

You can read that here:

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/fb290076-f97d-41f4-9801-505ccf5ef1d6/entity-framework-and-sql-xml-data-type?forum=adodotnetentityframework