title: How can I use SQL many-to-many table from Entity Framework?
body: <p>I am developing for an existing application which uses a SQL database that is used by two applications. One uses Entity Framework to connect to the database. The other uses LINQ-to-SQL. The SQL database is designed so that there are some tables showing many-to-many relationships between rows in two tables. Entity Framework seems not to import these tables, apparently because it has some object-oriented idea for how many-to-many relationships ought to be represented. So far, the Entity Framework application has not needed to know about those tables, but now it should. I don't know how that works, and I am concerned that even if I learn about Entity Framework's exciting new way to represent these relationships, that it won't cooperate nicely with the other application or the database which is designed to use the many-to-many table.</p>
  
  <p>I.e., there is a table of Foos, and a table of Bars, and then a table with Foo and Bar Ids that lists which Foos relate to which Bars, and I don't want to stop using this relationship table, particularly because there is another LINQ application that heavily uses this relationship table.</p>
  
  <p>Questions:</p>
  
  <p>If I learn to use Entity Framework's many-to-many system, will it use and update the many-to-many table that the other application uses?</p>
  
  <p>If not, what is a good way to get Entity Framework to not ignore the many-to-many relationship table, so I can write code to use the existing table?</p>