What is EF Core Database Provider architecture?

EF Core is designed with a provider model, meaning the core engine provides generic capabilities, and Providers translate them to specific databases.

Providers (like Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer or Npgsql.EntityFrameworkCore.PostgreSQL) implement specific interfaces to map EF's Relational model to database-specific dialects (e.g., handling SQL Server's IDENTITY vs Postgres's SERIAL). This allows EF Core to work with NoSQL (CosmosDB), In-Memory, and relational DBs.