Abstract away the DAL from Entity Framework implementation

Question

First of all I'm sorry if this is going to be a long post, but I don't know how to explain the problem in the correct way without the required details.

I'm having troubles finding a way to abstract my DAL from an Entity Framework implementation. The project I'm working on is very small, but if in future I'd want to switch to another ORM like NHibernate, or just plain ADO.NET, I'd like to write code just for the implementation, not the entire DAL.

Say I have these entities in my MyWallet.DAL:

public interface IWallet {
    long Id { get; set; }
    float TotalAmountOfMoney { get; set; }
    long CurrencyId { get; set; }
    ICurrency Currency { get; set; }
    DateTime RecordedOn { get; set; }
    ICollection<IMoneyMovement> MoneyMovements { get; set; }
}

public interface ICurrency {
    long Id { get; set; }
    char Symbol { get; set; }
    string Code { get; set; }
    string Description { get; set; }
}

public interface IMoneyMovement {
    long Id { get; set; }
    float Amount { get; set; }
    string Description { get; set; }
    long WalletId { get; set; }
    IWallet Wallet { get; set; }
    DateTime RecordedOn { get; set; }
    DateTime MovedOn { get; set; }
}

As you can see these are plain interfaces which I plan to implement on another library which will contain the actual Entity Framework implementation (say MyWallet.DAL.EntityFramework). Of course I'm going to decorate the entities implementation with Entity Framework specific attributes as [Key] or [ForeignKey] and stuff like that.

I also defined some repository in MyWallet.DAL like IWalletRepository, IMoneyMovementRepository, ICurrencyRepository to gain access to the entities. Actually I don't know if this is the right way to design access to the entities. Of course I also defined factories to get the concrete implementation of the entities.

In my business layer I defined services to handle the object request, work with the DAL entities and return a business object, like this:

public class WalletService {
    private readonly IWalletRepository _walletRepository;
    private readonly IWalletFactory _walletFactory;

    public WalletService(IWalletRepository walletRepository, 
        IWalletFactory walletFactory) {

        _walletRepository = walletRepository;
        _walletFactory = walletFactory;
    }

    public CreatedWallet CreateWallet(CreateWalletRequest request) {
        var wallet = _walletFactory.Create();

        wallet.CurrencyId = request.CurrencyId;
        wallet.TotalAmountOfMoney = request.TotalAmountOfMoney;
        wallet.RecordedOn = DateTime.Now;

        _walletRepository.Create(wallet);
        _walletRepository.SaveChanges();

        return new CreatedWallet {
            Id = wallet.Id
        }
    }
}

I thought this was going to work seamlessly, or at worst - in a situation when I've got more than one repository - I could share the DataContext so I'd need to fire the SaveChanges method on just one to reflect the changes on the database.

The problem is with the repository implementation, in this case I'll continue with Entity Framework:

public class EFDataContext : DbContext {
    public EFDataContext() : base ("name=MyConnectionString") {
    }

    public virtual DbSet<EFWallet> Wallets { get; set; }
    public virtual DbSet<EFMoneyMovement> MoneyMovements { get; set; }
    public virtual DbSet<EFCurrency> Currencies { get; set; }
}

public class EFWalletRepository : IWalletRepository {
    private readonly EFDbContext _dataContext;

    public EFWalletRepository(EFDbContext dataContext) {
        _dataContext = dataContext ?? new EFDbContext();
    }

    public int SaveChanges() {
        return _dataContext.SaveChanges();
    }

    public void Dispose() {
        _dataContext.Dispose();
    }

    public void Create(IWallet wallet) {
        ...???
    }
}

Now that's the problem: how do I work with interfaces when the DataContext knows only about concrete implementations? Am I doing this all wrong?

UPDATE:

Ok so, basically, as stated out by @TomTom, why fight Entity Framework when you could just embrace its power? I guess I'll just let EF be the abstraction. In fact, by letting EF act as the DAL, you can just focus on the business logic of your project.

And to put it all together and respond to @tdragon regarding the repositories / unit of work issue: yes, I could either wrap multiple repositories inside an unit of work or simply let the DbContext be the unit of work:

public class EFWalletRepository : IWalletRepository {
    private readonly EFDbContext _dataContext;

    public EFWalletRepository() {
        _dataContext = new EFDbContext();
    }

    public void Dispose() {
        _dataContext.Dispose();
    }

    public IEnumerable<Wallet> Wallets {
        get { return _dataContext.Wallets; }
    }

    public void SaveWallet(Wallet wallet) {
        if (wallet.Id == 0) {
            _dataContext.Wallets.Add(wallet);
        } else {
            var databaseEntry = _dataContext.Wallets.Find(wallet.Id);
            //update properties
        }

        _dataContext.SaveChanges();
    }
}

Answer 1

Simply speaking: yes, you do it wrong. You introduce a bad abstraction (that costs you dearly in functionality) "because of". EF already is an abstraction.

Any abstraction on top of it will cost you in terms of functionality used - which in terms of databases comes with a big performance impact. Want an example? "Include" to preload navigation properties (instead of lazy loading). You will have to work around this and a lot of more detailed behavior that is ORM specific - for the gain of having what? And if you give up on those higher more specific functions your performance WILL suffer.

Answer 2

I can't see any reason to abstract your model (entities). Do you expect them to change when you change the way you access your database?

But if you want to keep it that way, you can make your repository interfaces generic, and pass the concrete entity type when defining repository, so you would end up with:

public class EFWalletRepository : IWalletRepository<EFWallet>
{
    public void Create(EFWallet wallet)
    {
        _dataContext.Add(wallet);
    }
}

Other suggestions:

1. You should not expose sets for your model properties. It's against OOP rules - you should rather expose some methods to manipulate the objects, the state should be more internal.
2. You probably should not add SaveChanges() method to your repository - this should be a "unit of work" job to commit all changes to the database.
3. You would face a problem when you would use more than one repository in your service layer, as you create a new DbContext for repository, when you should have one for single "unit of work".