I need to add a nullable column to a database without breaking other EF users of the database. Will I break them?
I have tested this with Code First. If you add a Nullable column to the database, EF Code First consumers will not have an issue working with the table.
Related
I am trying to change the service based database in my project to SQLite. I am using EF database first approach but the EF does not generate every model from database. Eventhough foreign keys are set it does not generate the connections and also returns an error:
> Error 6005: The data type '' is currently not supported for the target Entity Framework version; the column 'Id' in the table 'main.Comments' was excluded.
It does so with every table that has an Id column (integer, primary key).
How can I fix this?
Thanks
When I add a column in the database, under what conditions do I need to update my EDMX?
To elaborate:
I know if I add a non-nullable field, I need to update the model if I want to write to the database. What if just I want to read?
What if it's a nullable field? Can I both read and write?
What if I were to change the primary key to the new column but the edmx still has the old column as primary?
1) If you want to port an old database, you need to make sure that every table in your database must have a primary key. This is the only requirement for creating the EDMX.
2) If you've added a column in a table at database side, and have not updated edmx, then you'll simply not be able to use that column though EntityFramework.
If you create a non nullable column with no default value, the insert operation will fail with exception "Cannot insert null into column , statement terminated". And the you'll not be able to read values of that column using entityframeowrk, unless you update the edmx.
3) If you've changed the primary key of any table at database side, and if the edmx is not aware of that, your application might create a runtime exception when performing operations with that table.
Remember, Entity Framework creates SQL queries depending upon its knowledge of database(which is defined in EDMX). So if EDMX is incorrect, the resulting SQL queries so generated might lead to problems at runtime.
I have a junction table with and idenity primary key columns to realize a many to many relationship. Visual Studio automatically detects it as a many to many relationship and the junction table is not an entity.
How can i realize it that also this table is generated as an entity? I need this for breeze.js .
You just need to add additional columns (or properties) to that table (or model).
You said that your table has acolumn named ID and it's the primary key withe IsIdentity set to true. It must works, I'm using this approach...
There must be a problem or missing with your table definition. However, if all are OK, just add a nullable column in your table and update your model from database. The problem will go away.
I am using EF 5 and SQL Server 2005, Model First (sort of).
By sort of, I mean that I typically build my schema in the SQL Server designer, but import the schema into EF so I have a visual view. There is often round-tripping.
However, I noticed that when I try to generate the DB schema based on the EF model, it skips all of the NEWID() default values that I have assigned as default values to my Guid IDs, but it doesn't skip the identity fields of type int.
I found this post explaining the reasoning for this:
Entity Framework 4 and Default Values
However, it doesn't answer my question: How do I get Entity Framework to generate a SQL DDL database schema with default values of NEWID() for my uniqueidentifier types?
NOTE:
I don't care about how to set them from the POCO entities and so forth (there are plenty of posts describing that) - my concern is getting the SQL DDL generated right so I can seed the database without worrying about these values going missing.
Using Entity Framework Migrations, you can use the GUID column builder and its DefaultValueSql parameter. The value of that parameter can be the string "NEWID()". This should take care of proper DDL generation.
Next you should declare these properties as database-generated using attributes or the fluent model builder, so that EF ignores the values set in your POCOs (which will be null for new objects).
I am using JOINED inheritance strategy with EclipseLink JPA implementation. I have noticed that EclipseLink is adding discriminator column, named by default DTYPE, to the database schema. I understand, that discriminator is needed for one table inheritance strategy, but why for JOINED strategy?
EclipseLink needs this column because I've got errors after removing it. Is this column added for performance reasons, etc? I am not particularly happy about that since from the point of view of database schema this column is just unnecessary clutter.
Hibernate based JPA does not do anything similar.
From Joined Table Inheritance:
In the joined table inheritance, each
class shares data from the root table.
In addition, each subclass defines its
own table that adds its extended
state. The following example shows two
tables, PROJECT and L_PROJECT, as well
as two classes, Project and
LargeProject:
...
The discriminator column is what determines the type and thus what joined table to use so you need a discriminator column in the parent table.