If one has derived entity types defined in the model and doesn’t use MEST (default scenario), the derived entities are not shown in the schema tree, since only entity sets defined in the model are currently shown. Per default it means only base entity types. It makes model exploration capability very limited. Consider a model where all the entities derive from a single base type MyObject (arguable but viable design). Then you end up with only one “table” entry MyObjects in the schema tree with few to none properties defined. All the hundreds of “real” types with all their valuable properties and relationships just remain unreachable. The suggestion is to visualize the entire hierarchy of entity types, providing adjusted query snippets for them (those ones in the context menu), like MyObjects.OfType<MyDerivedType1>().Take(100), and so on. Certainly, entity types should be visually distinguishable from entity types as well as abstract and non-abstract entity types.