In my web app a user can assign muliple tags to products (like the tagging here on stackoverflow).
There are three tables: products, tags and products_tags to implement a many to many relationship.
My question is, how would you implement this with the Entity Framework (LINQ to SQL):
"Insert only a new tag in the tags table if it doesnt already exist there".
So before the insert i have to check first if a tag exists, whats the best way to accomplish this (best performance) ??
thanks for answers
Simple: The Tag should then be the user assigned key/PK of the entity/table.
If you have troubles synchronizing this with the database, I am sure there's something like (N)Hibernate's merge Method in EntityFramework.
Related
Is it possible to reference additional columns apart from the 'Code' and 'Name' columns when using a domain attribute in an entity?
E.g. A person entity has a code of '1' and a name of 'Smith' and a Gender of 'Male'
In a customer entity there is a domain value referencing the person entity which displays the following 1 {Smith}. The users would like an additional read only attribute which would copy the Gender value of 'Male' into the customer entity based on the domain value. Can this be done using out of the box MDS UI?
I know this is duplicate data and breaks normal form but for usability this would be useful. It would be the equivalent of referencing additional columns in an MS Access drop down list.
Many thanks in advance for any help
This is not possible with the standard UI. One option would be to develop a custom UI where you can handle these kind of requests.
If you want to stick with the standard product I can see a workaround but this is a bit of a "dirty" one.
You can misuse (abuse) the Name attribute of the Person entity by adding a business rule to the Person entity that generates the content of the Name attribute as a concatenation of multiple attributes. You of course need an additional attribute that serves as a place holder for the original Name. The concatenated field will then show in your customer entity.
One question that does come to mind is why a user would like/need to see the gender of a person in a customer list? As you have a separate Person entity I expect you to have multiple persons per customers. What would the gender of one person - even if it is the main contact - matter?
I'm using .Net 4.5, entity framework 5, database first. I have a junction (many-to-many) table in my database. For this example lets say the table is "StudentsCourses":
Students
-PkStudentId
-Name
Courses
-PkCourseId
-CourseNumber
StudentsCourses
-FkStudentId
-FkCourseId
This works just fine right now. The 'generate model from database' creates a Student entity with a navigation property to the Course entity. But here is where the trouble is:
I need to add another column to the StudentsCourses table. Lets just call this column "CourseYear". So our junction table would now look like this:
StudentsCourses
-FkStudentId
-FkCourseId
-CourseYear
So, I've added this column to the database and ran "Update Model from Database" on the edmx. I would expect to see an entity created for StudentCourses, with a navigation property to both Students and Courses. But no such entity is created. I still see the same two tables (Students & Courses) with the same navigation property as before.
I've done a lot of reading and researching, but haven't really come across a clear-cut answer. There is a wealth of information on code-first which I can't apply to my scenario. Is there a way to get what I'm after? Is it as simple as adding a PkId to the StudentCourses table? SQL Replication is preventing me from doing this. I would think the composite should suffice, but maybe EF needs a PK to do it's magic? I read a little bit about manually setting relationships, but could not find anything speaking to my particular situation. It could be that I am just missing a simple step in the process of updating the edmx from database. I've done this plenty of times when: adding new tables, adding columns, deleting columns, etc. I'm following the same steps as I always do, but maybe I need to do something different in this case?
Thanks ahead of time for any help. It is greatly appreciated. Please let me know if any more information would help.
From what I've gathered it appears as though EF will not generate a model for a table that doesn't have a Primary Key.
I'm a bit late for this, but you have the answer in this thread Updating Entity Framework Model after adding a field to a previous look up only table
As they say here, you have to delete the relationship between Students and Courses in the designer. Then update your model from the database, and make sure StudentsCourses table is checked in the Tables branch of the Add tab.
I'm really new to Entity Framework (currently using EF5) and vs2012 and am having difficulty trying to figure something out.
I have an .edmx that was generated from my database. It has two tables in it: Item and 3rdPartyItem. In short, the Item table is the main table for all the company items while the 3rdPartyItem table is a table that is used to hold additional attributes for items. This 3rdPartyItem table was created by an outside company and is used with their software for the company, so I can't mess with either table. What I'm trying to do is show a list of Items in a grid but I need to show a combination of all the fields for both tables. In vs2012, if I create a relationship and make it 'zero-to-one' (because for each record in the Item table, there doesn't necessarily have to be one in the 3rdPartyItem table), vs complains about not being mapped correctly. When I set the mapping, it then complains that there's multiple relationships. I did some research and found that you can't create a relationship with 2 primary keys, so I was thinking that was the problem. But how can I change the .edmx so that in code, I can access Items and 3rdPartyItem like so:
var items = dbContext.Items;
items.3rdPartyItem.SomeField <--field from 3rdPartyItem table.
not too sure if it's even possible, but it would be very, very helpful if so. Any ideas?
What you're looking for is table-per-type (TPT) mapping inheritance. You can view an MSDN walkthrough here (although you'd want your base type to be instantiable):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/jj618293.aspx
I have a dumb question. It would be great if this could be done, but I am not holding my breath.
I need a single column from a table linked to my JPA entity to be a collection in said JPA entity. Is there any way, that I can just get back that column alone that is related to that entity, instead of having to get back an entire table (which could be very costly?)
Can I perform a query inside that JPA entity that will be performed and loaded eagerly into a collection?
I am trying to avoid having to make several calls to the database by just executing a couple of queries.
What are your thoughts on this?
#ElementCollection(fetch=FetchType.EAGER)
#CollectionTable(name="QUICK_LAUNCH_DISTLIST",joinColumns=#JoinColumn(name="QUICK_LAUNCH_ID"))
#Column(name="LIST_ID")
private List<Long> distListIDs;
The ElementCollection attribute is what I was looking for. It seems to work pretty well in addition to that.
Thanks for the help and inspiration guys.
Suppose a Category has many products:
select product.name from Category c inner join c.products product where ...
If that's not what you want, please show an example in your question.
I have a many-to-many relationship between 2 entities in Entity Framework, like here . So, Employees and Projects. At one point, I would like to insert some Projects to a Employees entity in a specific order. By conserving the order I would like to know which was the first preference of the Employees for a Projects entity. The thing is that although I order the Student.Projectslist in the way I like before the insert, when selecting Employees.Projects.FirstOrDefault(), the entities are ordered after the ProjectsId and I don't get the first element I inserted. How can I conserve the order I want?
O course, I could make a new field PreferredProjects and save the other Projects in a random order, since only the preferred one is important for me. But this is not an option, being given the context of the current project's software design.
Thank you in advance...
It sounds like you simply want to have sorted child collection results when you do a query, rather than take full control of the insert order.
You can achieve that using the techniques described in Tip 1 of my tips series.
Hope this helps.
Alex
Program Manager Entity Framework Team.
Unfortunately, there is no easy solution. I have the same problem. The only solution is to save after adding each child item (project). This is the only way to save the order without using a new field column to sort input.
Try Employees.Projects.OrderBy(x => x).FirstOrDefault()