How can i use one sequence to auto increment several tables in squeryl (PostgreSQL)? - postgresql

I have follows
val s1 = autoIncremented("advert_id_seq")
on(car)(attributes => declare(attributes.id is (s1)))
on(danceInstructor)(attributes => declare(attributes.id is (s1)))
When i run my app a catch following exception
org.postgresql.util.PSQLException: ERROR: relation "advert_id_seq" already exists
As i realized, squeryl try to create sequence twice and gets error

I'm guessing that your issue is with Schema generation, not with querying the database. If that's the case, then you probably just want to avoid having Squeryl create the tables directly. Squeryl's schema generation is purposefully basic. When you outgrow what it can do I think you're better off adopting some method that gives you greater control than a "read your model and generate stuff" tool can offer. Tools like Flyway or Liquibase are good for this.
If you don't want to adopt a new library you can also use Squeryl to output the schema to a file through one of the Schema.printDdl methods then remove the extraneous sequence before executing it.

Ruby on Rails has a polymorphic association, but scala active record don't have its. I made something like it's, and will push it in github repo.

Related

How should I handle database evolutions when using Play and Slick? Must I manually write SQL?

I'm looking at the "Hello Slick" tutorial. A users table is defined and then created using users.schema.create (the code on github is outdated so there it's users.ddl.create there, but when I create the app in Activator it's schema because it's using Slick 3.0.0, which is close enough). However if I run the app a second time there's an error because the table already exists. I see no option like users.schema.createIfNotExists which is a bit surprising. But in any case I would need something more sophisticated if I added a column to the table sometime in the future. So does Slick have no way of helping with migrations/evolutions?
I'm using Play and supposedly Play Slick has special support for database evolutions. It's not clear what is offered in addition to the usual Play evolutions that is specific to Slick: we're just told to add a dependency. I can't see any further documentation.
Do I have to manually write the SQL for evolutions (1.sql, Ups, Downs, etc.)? If so it seems pretty silly to have to write code like column[Int]("ID", O.PrimaryKey, O.AutoInc) in addition. I'm bothered by the duplication of effort and worried that if my SQL/DDL is wrong subtle bugs will appear when I access the database. I may be wrong but I seem to remember that migrations can be automatically generated after changing a model in Django so it doesn't seem like an unsolvable problem. Is this just not something that's been implemented or am I missing something?
I'm using PostgreSQL if that's relevant.
You could use slicks schema code generation feature:
http://slick.typesafe.com/doc/3.0.0/code-generation.html
This way if you update the db schema, you don't have to hand write the slick classes to correspond with the table this will just do it for you.

My programs use Entity Framework. How can I add a field to a database table without having them throw exceptions?

My programs use Entity Framework. I want to add new fields to a modelled database table being referenced by these programs, but these programs won't use these new fields (others will use them). It appears that the existing programs start throwing exceptions, even though they don't reference these new fields. Is there a way around this?
My experience in the past has been that Entity Framework can ignore database fields as long as they are nullable. If the new fields are non-nullable, Entity Framework throws exceptions because it can't generate valid insert statements for them.
I think the answer (or perhaps work-around) is as follows (my experience is only using SQL Server, and using the SSMS to edit the database tables):
If you have a running system and you wish to add new fields to a database table, be sure to add those fields at the "end" of the table's definition, otherwise you will have to rebuild all of the running processes against the new table definition.
Just musing, I doubt this is the best solution.
You generate your model against views rather than tables, that will afford you the freedom to modify the underlying tables as required.

JPA table capitalization inconsistent

We're using a very basic JPA implementation that should create tables consistently from our models.
I believe we're using EclipseLink or TopLink (whichever one is default with the latest Netbeans/Glassfish). The problem is, the tables are created with inconsistent capitaliztion and with the columns out of order. For me, It creates the "User" table as "user", and for other members of my team it creates "USER".
I've tried using the #Table annotation (#Table(name="USer")), but it doesn't work.
How do we get EclipseLink to generate consistent table names? Frankly this seems like a rather amateurish mistake for a framework like this.
Sub-question : the reason this is a problem is because EclipseLink by default has no default way of managing schema/data migrations, as far as I know of. The way we're handling it is by writing a bunch of INSERT INTO's to bootstrap the objects we need in our database, and drop-and-recreating the tables every time the schema changes. I know this is not the best practice for propagating schema changes -- does anyone know how this is typically handled in a standard JPA implementation?
Thanks.
By default EclipseLink uses all upper case for the table name, the class User would be USER.
If you specify an #Table annotation with name="USer", then the table will be created as "USer".
Perhaps you are using your own scripts to create the tables, or you database is changing the case based on the OS or its own settings. What database are you using?
If you enable logging in EclipseLink, it will show the exact DDL that it is executing (if it is executing DDL).
In EclipseLink 2.4 there is also a "create-or-extend-tables" DDL generation option to alter existing tables.
We never found any good answer for this. Luckily, we found a workaround for the ways we were using to update the table, which didn't care about capitalization.

Change Schema of Entity Framework

I'm using Entity Framework 5 on ASP MVC 4 web site I'm developing.
Because I am using shared hosting which charge for the number of databases I use I would like to run a test site near my production site.
I have two problems:
1) I use Code First and Database Migration. The migration classes seem to embed the schema dbo inside the name of the tables.
How can I change the schema according to the test/production flag
2) How can I change the schema from which EF select data?
Thank you,
Ido.
Both migration and EF take schema from mapping so if you want to change the schema you must update your mapping to use:
modelBuilder.Entity<MyEntity>().ToTable("MyTable", "MySchema");
and control the value of MySchema from configuration but this is really bad idea. One day you forget to change the value and break your production. Use local database for development and test.
As already said: use identical databases (structurally) for development, test and production.
The goal of schemas is to group database objects, like we do with namespaces in e.g. C#, or to simplify permissions for groups of database objects. Not to identify database stages. By using them for the latter you also make it much harder, if not impossible, to use schema appropriately. See for instance this MSDN white paper.
It is much easier to use some database name conventions to indicate their purpose.

DevExpress XPO vs NHibernate vs Entity Framework: database upgrading issue

What is the best practice for upgrading the database using ORM (DevExpress XPO, NHibernate or MS Entity Framework)?
I'm starting a new project and have to pick an ORM. The development process requires of releasing intermediate test builds quite often and likely that each build will have changes in the database structure. Each new version has to upgrade the DB gently to keep current data.
For old solutions I would provide a set of SQL scripts for upgrading the database from v1 to v2, from v2 to v3, etc. and execute them sequentially.
But how is it going to work for ORM? Should I still write SQL scripts to upgrade the DB?
I understand that simple adding new fields wouldn't cause a problem (e.g. see UpdateSchema() method for XPO), but what if I have to split a table and reallocate current records into 2 new tables?
I can't comment on the other ORM's, but I have used DevExpress XPO for a corporate treasury application since 2007. The schema changes a little with every release but there have also been some big schema changes over the years as well. A somewhat extended version of the default XPO upgrade mechanism has comfortably catered for all the changes.
There is good basic information here about upgrading XPO applications.
DevExpress provide a DBUpdater tool to assist you with the task of upgrading production environments. You can extend this tool to cater for additional requirements. In my application, we have added some options for logging, preview with rollback, etc.
Each module has virtual UpdateDatabaseBeforeSchemaUpdate() and UpdateDatabaseAfterSchemaUpdate() methods. You can significantly control the upgrade process within these.
As you mention, some of the upgrade will be handled automatically by XPO (e.g., adding a new column), but some things need additional control such as initialising the new column with a default value for existing records.
For instance, let's say MyNewField has been added to the MyEntity XPO class in version 2.0 of your application. Let's say it should default to a value of 3 for existing records. XPO will handle the creation of the new column but existing records will be NULL. (If you specify a default value in the XPO class it would only pertain to new records). In order to correct the value for existing records you would add something like the following to entity module's overridden UpdateDatabaseAfterSchemaUpdate():
public override void UpdateDatabaseAfterUpdateSchema()
{
base.UpdateDatabaseAfterUpdateSchema();
if (CurrentDBVersion < new Version(2, 0, 0, 0))
ObjectSpace.GetSession().ExecuteNonQuery(
"UPDATE [MyEntity] SET [MyNewField] = 3 WHERE [MyNewField] IS NULL");
}
(You could also use ObjectSpace.GetObjects<MyEntity>() and a foreach if you prefer to avoid the direct SQL.)
In your more extreme example of splitting a table in two, you can use the same method, but you would override UpdateDatabaseBeforeUpdateSchema() instead, run the SQL to split the table, let XPO perform any other schema updates and, if necessary, populate any default values in the UpdateDatabaseAfterUpdateSchema().
You will find that you bump into constraint problems e.g., foreign key violations so you might find you need to write some general routines such as DropAllForeignKeyConstraints() as part of the UpdateDatabaseBeforeUpdateSchema(). Sometimes you find that XPO already provide something, sometimes not. Missing constraints and indexes will get regenerated in the schema update. (In my experience switching a master data table's primary key turned out to be the hardest update routine to get right.)
By default the calls all happen in an SQL transaction so if anything fails it should all roll back.
The developers need to be aware of when a change to the domain model is likely to cause a problem with the underlying schema.
For testing, we keep a few old customer databases and run a bunch of before-and-after tests as part of the build process to make sure that existing customers are able to upgrade properly whatever version they are upgrading from. In production whenever we run into a problem upgrading, the problem data is added into this test library to prevent similar problems in the future.
We are dealing with major international companies and banks. The customers are quite happy with the result. In situations where a corporate's DBA needs to sign off on the changes, they don't seem to mind having a command line tool to do the upgrade rather than a script.
Most migration solutions can handle easy tasks, like adding new column, relationship or removing one, but fail to work when you rename a column (is that an add? or a remove following an add which equals a rename? What should you do with the data in that case?)
All three solutions have basic migrations support, XPO even lets you run your own scripts as a part of the process (to insert static/test/contant data, etc.)
There's also the MigratorDotNet project that you can use and not to rely on any ORM specific feature regarding migrations.
Personally, I would use auto migration only in dev/test environment and would have full set of upgrade scripts when running on client specific database to say upgrade from v1 to v2.
How is it going to work for ORM? Should I still write SQL scripts to
upgrade the DB?
Clear answer of this question should be on Programmer's stackexchange thread - What are the criteria for evaluating an ORM for.NET?, there i got simple answer for your question that you asked and matches with my experience with ORM while developing some project with Entity framework and Code smith ORM templates.
How does the ORM manages changes in the data model? what if I have to split a table and reallocate current records into 2 new tables?
Some can update the DB automatically within a certain measure, other
don't do anything and you'll have to do the dirty work yourself; other
provide a framework for handling change that lets you control database
updates. That means every couple of days someone needs to spend an hour updating the model to add a table or change datatypes that are changing
Ref:
https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6543/what-are-the-benefits-of-using-database-abstraction-by-orm
https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/41739/best-arguments-for-against-introducing-orm-technology-into-a-companies-dev-proce/41833#41833
If you ask - what is the best practice for upgrading the db using ORM - my answer is: Don't use it if your application is more than a hobbyist app.
There are a lot of scenarios where many ORMs are unable to provide support to your specific database needs, e.g. in creating stored procedures, create indices and views or even indexed views/materialized tables without writing sql scripts. Problems like adding a new non-nullable column to an existing table are much harder to solve in ORM-Migration-Code than by writing SQL scripts.
Current Tools like Visual Studio Data Tools do handle these kind of problems way better.