EF Code First, Model First or Db First? for a many changing medium-large app

Question

We are going to develop a medium-large customized web app for a private company using MVC 4 and EF 5.

Early analysis and previous experiences on that business field show that it will have more than 150 tables/entities and because our customer isn't a software engineer and we know that our data model will change many times through the progress of the project.

Now, my Q is which approach is better for us according of the following:

1) Causes less effort on updating data model and data store because of many changes that will occur.

2) Takes less time to create the data store and helps progress the project faster.

Note: This app will work with big sets of data (10k, 100k objects for some entities). However, it will have few (and maybe sometimes no) concurrent requests and online users.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I think the term

because our customer isn't a software engineer and we know that our data model will change many times

Is a reality but is not the whole reason of data model change in many times!

BTW some suggestions may be helpful
Consider business analysis a key point and do continues business analysis
More and more investing on analysis will cause less cost on development and change management
Have a specific talented analyst as a representative positioned in the customer office.
Have a specific representative of customer accountable for analysis and development team. Document the customers business process, talk about them with the customer. Document the negotiation results.
Design and change management
Never design the database alone. Brainstorming team member, invite customer representative, invite business analyst, have a DBA in design team, have a Change-Manager role.
Technology
Have a look on technology trend (may using a document-based database will be helpful)
Have a flexible framework and architecture in service of business software production and not in reverse! Changes will come ... be ready
Changes will come, all above efforts are targeted to optimized the solution to cost less when change happen, they will not prevent the changes.
You need to have an acceptable mechanism to bill them to the customer
ITIL's Service-level management, SLA and OLA will be a guide line.

So the question answers:
1) All above will help on the problem. Continues interactive analysis first, next design and develop in iterations, using template approach.Changs will come and they will cost.
2) Depends on technology and frameworks, there will be tools (I don't know EF) just don't insist on a specific platform or library.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

I can recommend you to use CodeFirst structure. Because your classes will be clear and mainly you work with classes much in business logic.

Answer 3

please, look at this,this and this.