We’ll start by creating a new ASP.NET MVC 2 Project within Visual Studio 2010.  Choose File->New Project and use the “ASP.NET MVC 2 Empty Web Application” project template to do this.

This will create an empty ASP.NET MVC 2 project that does not have any controllers, models or views within it:

We’ll next work to define our NerdDinner “model” – which refers to the objects that represent the data of our application, as well as the corresponding domain logic that integrates validation and business rules with it.  The model is the "heart" of an MVC-based application, and fundamentally drives the behavior of it.  We’ll create this model layer using the new EF4 “Code First” capabilities.

Step 2: Create our Model

Let’s assume we do not already have a database defined, and that we are building our new NerdDinner application completely from scratch.

We do not need to start with a database

When using a code-first development workflow, we do not need to begin our application by creating a database or specifying schema.  Instead we can begin by writing standard .NET classes that define the domain model objects that are most appropriate for our application – without having to worry about intermixing data persistence logic within them.