Stop automatic migrations when I deploy to production - entity-framework

I have a linq to entities application that was working great until someone tried to add a column to a database table.
I was quite surprised to see that the production application crashed because it wanted to run to automatic migration and delete the column. It stopped due to potential dataloss.
How can I have my application run and not try to sync the database up? I would like older versions of my linq to entities code first applications to run alongside the newer versions if the database changes are not breaking changes.

In production, you could...
Use SetInitializer<YourContext>(null) on startup or...
Disable database initialization using the configuration file
<contexts>
<context type="Namespace.MyContext, MyAssembly"
disableDatabaseInitialization="true" />
</contexts>
Either way, automatic migrations would be disabled (as would the __MigrationsHistory/metadata check...I think).

Related

Resetting Entity Framework Migrations then synchronizing schemas from previous migrations

I am using Entity Framework 6.1.3 Data migrations along with code first.
I am in the process of resetting the migrations. I have deleted the migrations history table and created a new baseline snapshot of the current state of the db. Everything works fine on a new install with the following intializer:
Database.SetInitializer(new MigrateDatabaseToLatestVersion<T>, Migrations.Configuration>(true));
However, how should one deploy this reset to our customers who have an existing database? This fails locally when i have an existing db with the error:
There is already an object named '*****' in the database.
Does anyone have a better approach when needing to reset migrations and synchronizing schemas of existing databases?
I set out thinking I needed to reset my migrations because previous developers on my team were not using the Add-Migrations script correctly. This was causing the following error:
However, I wasn't sure how that would work out for existing customers. I didn't realize that I was able to re-scaffold my migrations. After much SO searching and trial and error, I was able to save my migrations. I first migrated to a migrations that was in a good state.
It was important to use the fully qualified name given. After trial and error I found a stable migration. I verified this by running the following:
It would succeed if EF could fully reconcile. I also had to exclude from VS project, all the migrations following the recently targeted migration. Simple shift select, right click and exclude from project.
Then I added the next migration back to the project after i updated the database. I also used the fluent API to exclude all the model changes following the currently targeted migration.
Then I incrementally re-scaffold all the broken migrations.
Then at the very end I created an idempotent script of my schema up to this point. Using the following:
My migrations are now not complaining about model mismatch and I am happy.

Update Model from Database, with LocalDb and |DataDirectory|

We're using EF 6, in database-first mode.
We've been building a database migration package, using FluentMigrator, and we've been running our migrations against empty LocalDb databases in our solution, for use in integration testing, etc.
Because we need our solutions to build wherever they're checked out, we've been using |DataDirectory| in the connection strings.
We've written some unit [sic] tests, running against LocalDb instances, running the migrations first to ensure that the tests are running against the current schema. (Yes, these are integration tests, but we're using a unit test framework, and I don't want to argue about it.)
What I would like to do next is to change our configuration so that when we run "Update Model from Database" on our .edmx files, it's the LocalDb instance that the tool looks to. And I can't make that work.
My guess is that whatever tool is running, when we do this, doesn't have it's DataDirectory set where I need it to be, in it's appdomain.
Does anyone know what tool this might be? And how I can configure it to connect to a localdb instance, that's using |DataDirectory| to create a relative path?

How to revert EF Migrations and create new db tables

There's a lot of articles on this topic and I've spent hours reading them today. It's so confusing - most of the articles seem to try to save existing databases and even migration history.
My databases were created initially by code first migrations. I really don't have any data that's important to keep. So I would like to just delete my databases and the .cs migration history files in /Migrations folder. Then run add migrations and update-database to recreate the databases.
From what I'm reading, this is not the way to do it? My confusion is partially due to the totally different procedures suggested and the extensive coding for many solutions.
Can I delete my databases and /Migrations/*.* (except for Configurations.cs) and essentially reinitialize Migrations?
Btw, I am using VS Web Express 2013, MVC5/C#, SQL Express 2012.
I regularly do this during the development phase of my projects, as long as you are happy to lose your data then it is fine to delete the database, and migration classes, the database will be recreated when you run update-database.
During early development phases, my approach is to utilise automatic migrations and just use update-database which means nothing is created in the migrations folder, so you don't have to manage the extra files.
Obviously this approach isn't good once you start deploying the database for real, where I personally wouldn't use automatic migrations.
To enable automatic migrations, run the Enable-Migrations –EnableAutomaticMigrations command in the Package Manager Console.
More reading:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/dn481501.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/data/jj554735.aspx

How to Manage EF Migrations Between Development and Production Databases?

Before anyone marks this as a duplicate, none of the questions similar to this addressed any of my concerns or answered any of my questions.
I am currently developing all the POCOs and data contexts in a library project, and running migrations from within this project. The database I'm updating is the development database.
What do I do if I want to create the current schema to a fresh, new database? I figure that all I have to do is to change the connection string in web.config and run Update-Database, correct?
While the live/production database is up and running, I want to add new columns and new tables to the schema, and test it out in development. So I switch back the connection string to the development database's connection string, and run Update-Database.
Going back and forth between two databases seems like I'll get conflicts between _MigrationHistory tables and the auto-generated migration scripts.
Is it safe to manually delete the _MigrationHistory tables in both databases, and/or delete the migration files in /Migrations (so I'll run Add-Migration again)? How do we manage this?
What do I do if I want to create the current schema to a fresh, new database?
- Yes, to create fresh database to the current migration level you simply modify the connection string to point to a database that does not yet exist and run update-database. It will run all the migrations in order.
As far as migrating to the Production database, I am running the update-database command with the -script switch to acquire the raw sql and then applying that script to the production database manually. This is helpful if you need to keep a record of sql commands run against the database as well. Additionally, you can generate the script explicitly from a specific migration to another specific migration via some of the other update-database switches.
Alternatively, you can create an Idempotent script that works from any migration by using the–SourceMigration $InitialDatabase switch and optionally specify an end migration with –TargetMigration
If you delete the _MigrationHistory tables you will have issues where the generated script will be trying to add columns that already exist and such.
You may find the following link helpful:
Microsoft Entity Framework Migrations
I would suggest having a separate trunk in your source code repository - one pointing to production and one to development to avoid risks of switching between the two in visual studio.
Me also had the same problem, even when using one and the same database - due to some merges in the repository, and the mix of automatic/manual migrations. For some reason the EF was not taking into account the target database, and calculating what scripts need to me executed, based on what is already in the database.
To fix this, I go to the [__MigrationHistory] table on the target database and get the latest migration name. This will help EF to determinate the state of the DB, and will execute just the scripts needed.
then the following script is run:
update-database -script -sourcemigration {latest migration name}
This creates update script that is specific to the target database (the connection string should be correct, as discussed in the other comments)
you can also use -force parameter if needed
this way you can update any database to latest version, no mater in what version you found it, if it has MigrationHistory table.
Hope this helps
My production and my developmental database went out of synch and it gave me endless problems. I solved it using a tool from Red-Gate to match up the databases. After using the tool, the databases were exactly the same but my migration was not working and I started to get odd errors i.e. trying to add tables/ columns that already existed etc. I solved that. I just deleted the migration folder on the local, recreated it, added the initial migration, updated the database and then matched the data of this migration file (local) to the one on the host (delete all the data in the migration file on the host, and add the same data that is on the local into the host). A more detailed explanation is at:
migration synch developmental and production databases

Entity Framework Migrations

In my web.config, I have a connection string set which is different in my web.release.config where it is changed to use our production database using an xdt:transform. The problem is, I have only been running add-migration and update-database on the database contained within web.config. Is there some way I can run update-database when I publish using the release configuration?
To get around this in the short term, I change the connection string contained within web.config to the one contained in web.release.config and then run update-database prior to publishing, but this defeats the purpose of using an xdt:transform?
If you're using the VS Publish Web tool, you can check "Execute Code First Migrations (runs on application start)" in Settings.
If you're deploying to Azure, they can also run migrations on their side, I believe (I remember reading about "new" Azure-specific things regarding this just a couple of months ago, definitely less than a year).
Otherwise, you can always pass arguments to Update-Database to target another database (ConnectionStringName, ConnectionString, ConnectionProviderName), you shouldn't have to fiddle with the Web.config file.