Some developers start their ADO.NET Entity Framework projects with Microsoft SQL Server, and then migrate the projects to an enterprise-wide data source such as Oracle. While this practice might seem to be convenient, the migration cost can be expensive.
Data sources such as Microsoft SQL Server include boolean types, and porting applications to a data source that does not support boolean types could incur an unacceptable overhead. For example, meticulous and error-prone editing of Entity Framework mapping files could be required.
The Oracle Entity Framework data provider defines data types to facilitate the migration to Oracle. These data types are designed to support data types at the Entity Framework conceptual layer in terms of how they will be described at the data source layer.