I have a table [User] and another table [Salesperson] in my database. [Salesperson] defines a unique UserID which maps to [User].UserID with a foreign key. When I generate the model with Entity Framework I get a 1-to-Many relationship between [User]-[Salesperson], meaning that each User has a "Collection of Salesperson", but what I want is a 0..1-to-1 relationship where each User has a nullable reference to a "Salesperson".
I tried fiddling around with the XML and changing the association's multiplicity settings, but that only produced build errors. What I am trying to achieve is no different than having a nullable SalespersonID in [User] that references [Salesperson].SalespersonID, but because salespeople only exist for specific users it feels like I'd be muddying up my [User] table structure just to get the relationship to point the right way in Entity Framework.
Is there anything I can do to change the multiplicity of the relationship?
Make the PK of Salesperson itself a FK to User. The EF's GUI designer will then get the cardinality correct, since PKs are unique.
Related
I've got a table "Persons" (PersonId, Name, Address) which contains information about people. I then subclass this information with tables "Clients" (PersonId, DateJoined) and Victims (PersonId, DateAssassinated).
In SSMS I have established an FK relationship FK_Clients_Persons and FK_Victims_Persons where the Primary Key is Persons.PersonId and the foreign key is the eponymous field in the Clients and Victims tables respectively. In SSMS I cannot see any obvious functional difference between these relationships.
However, in ADO.NET Entities when I create the model from the database, the tool does not identify FK_Victims_Persons but it does recognise FK_Clients_Persons. It just treats Victims.PersonId as a simple field and doesn't generate relationship members for it. The missing FK relationship does not appear in the Constraints tree of the Model Browser, but the other one does.
I have no idea why this is, has anyone faced this problem before?
No matter how many times I start over, I can't get it to work.
I have an linq to entity mapping issue. I have three tables.
Table 1 - ItemsB(ID(key), Part_Number(will be null until built), other item b information)
Table 2 - ItemsA(ID(key), Part_Number(will be null until built), other item a information)
Table 3 - WebItems(Item_id, web item information) *Consists of items from both ItemsB and ItemsA after they are built and pushed over to this table.
ItemsA/ItemsB will have a 1 to 0.1 relationship with WebItems. Part_Number maps to Item_id.
I am using EF4.0.
Problem is after i set up the association/mappings as stated above i get an error message stating: "Problem in mapping fragment at lines so and so: Column [Part_Number] are being mapped in both fragments to different conceptual side properties."
Usually i know what to do in this case. Get rid of the property [Part_Number]. Problem is i need to access [Part_Number] in both ItemsB and ItemsA quite frequently without going to webitems. Not to mention webitems will not always have the [Part_Number] populated at certain points depending upon whether the items have be pushed to webitems.
Does anyone know how to get around this?
Thanks in advance.
As I understand it ItemA and ItemB to WebItem in one-to-one relation. One-to-one relation in EF always demands that relation is build on primary keys and one side is mandatory (principal) because dependent entity will have primary key and foreign key in one column. Once you assign primary key in dependent entity you must have principal entity with the same primary key otherwise you will violate referential integrity defined by foreign key.
The problem is that your Part_Number is primary key and foreign key in the same time. To allow such mapping in EFv4 you must use Foreign Key association instead of Independent association. Here is brief description how to create foreign key association in the designer. Once you define referential constrain get back to mapping window of association and delete the mapping.
I'm having trouble configuring entity relationships when one entity inherits from another. I'm new to ADO Entity Framework -- perhaps someone more experienced has some tips for how this is best done. I'm using .net 4.
Database tables with fields:
Products (int ID, nvarchar Description)
FoodProducts (int ProductID, bit IsHuge)
Flavors (int ID, int FoodProductID, nvarchar Description)
There are constraints between Products and FoodProducts as well as FoodProducts and Flavors.
Using the designer I create a model from the database. The designer seems to get it right, with a 1:0..1 association between Product and FoodProduct entities, and 1:* association between Flavor and FoodProduct. No errors when I save or build.
Next I set FoodProduct entity to inherit from Product entity. Then I get errors concerning relationship between Product and FoodProduct. Ok, starting fresh, I first delete the relationship between Product and FoodProduct before setting the inheritance. But now I get errors about the relationship between FoodProduct and Flavor. So I delete and then recreate that relationship, connecting Flavor.ID to FoodProduct.ProductID. Now I get other errors.
My question is this: Should I instead be creating relationship between Flavor.FoodProductID and Product.ID? If so, I assume I then could (or should) delete the FoodProduct.ProductID property. Since my database will have many of these types of relationships, am I better off first creating the entity model and exporting the tables to SQL, or importing the database schema and then making many tweaks?
My intent is that there will be several types of products, some of which require many additional fields, some of which do not. So there may be zero or one FoodProducts records associated with each Product record. At least by my thinking, the table for each sub-type (FoodProducts) should be able to "borrow" the primary key from Products (as a FK) to uniquely identify each of its records.
You can find a screen capture here: http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/9720/entityframework.jpg (I'd embed the img but haven't earned the requisite rep' yet!)
Well, I deleted the FoodProduct.ProductID field, as it should always return the same value as Product.ID anyway. Then, as you hinted, I had to manually map the Products.ID field to FoodProducts.ProductID field. Errors resolved. I'll write a little code to test functionality. Thanks for the "observations"!
Couple of observations:
FoodProducts needs a primary key (e,g identity - FoodProductID). Are you sure it should be a 1:0..1 between Food and FoodProducts? I would have thought it should be 1:0..*. For this cardinality to work you need a unique PK on this table.
When you setup inheritance for entities, the parent entity's properties are inherited. So FoodProducts will inherit ID from the Product table.
BUT, on the physical model (database), this field still needs to be mapped to a column on the FoodProducts table - which is why you need the identity field.
After you setup inheritance, you still need to map all the columns on the derived tables. My money is on you have not mapped "ID" on FoodProducts to any column.
If you screencapped your model and show the errors you are getting it would be much easier to diagnose the issue.
I'm sure I'm missing something very simple, but let's say I have two entities, Employee and EmployeeType.
Employee type would contain values like 'Full time', 'Contractor', 'Intern', etc.
An Employee entity would contain one, and only one EmployeeType value.
So I am designing a new .edmx model using the Model-First approach and generating my actual sql server data schema from the model.
I want to add an integer type foreign key id into my Employee entity, EmployeeTypeId, which will map to the primary key of the EmployeeType entity.
So I've gone ahead and done that in my Employee entity. Where I'm stuck is how, though the Entity Framework designer, to enforce the 1:1 referential constraint on that EmployeeTypeId property? Or does the EF handle that automatically behind the scenes?
thanks in advance,
John
Think I figured out the answer to my own question. In the EF .edmx surface designer, I needed to right click on the scalar property I wanted to set as a foreign key id to the other entity and choose 'Entity Key'.
Once that was done, I could go into the referential constraints dialog box and point my new foreign key property to the other entity.
If you don't explicitly set your foreign key property as 'Entity Key', EF will think you want to point your primary key id to the other table.
cheers
You first create a new association (if you haven't done this already) between the two entities. Just right-click on the edmx designer and choose Add -> Association.
When you click on the association you have just created in the model designer, in the properties window, you can set the End1 Multiplicity and End2 Multiplicity properties to 1. This will ensure that you can set only one relation entity while using the entity framework. This does not get enforced in SQL server by the way, because SQL server does not implicitly support 1:1 relationships.
Using VS 2010 beta 2, ASP.NET MVC.
I tried to create an Entity framework file and got the data from my database.
There were some issues with the relationships, so I started to tweak things around, but I kept getting the following error for simple one-to-one relationships
Error 1 Error 113: Multiplicity is not valid in Role 'UserProfile' in relationship 'FK_UserProfiles_Users'. Because the Dependent Role properties are not the key properties, the upper bound of the multiplicity of the Dependent Role must be *. myEntities.edmx 2024
My Users table is consists of some other many-to-many relationships to other tables, but when I try to make a one-to-one relationship with other tables, that error pops up.
Users Table
UserID
Username
Email
etc..
UserProfiles Table
UserProfileID
UserID (FK for Users Table)
Location
Birthday
For one-to-one relationships, EF expects that the tables are using the same primary key. And really, if it's a true one-to-one they probably should. So in your example, if you make UserID the primary key on the UserProfiles table, your one-to-one will work.
I have a similar issue, but with a sale and layby scenario.
A layby can exist without a sale, and a sale can exist without a layby. This means I have a 0 or 1 to 0 or 1 relationship.
Layby references sale, but layby cannot use the primary key of Sale, and Sale cannot use the primary key of Layby.
I solved the problem by using a 0 or 1 to many relationship, configured the 'Laybys' getter and setter on the sale as private, and then provided my own 'Layby' getter and setter in my POCO.
Make composite primary key set for two columns UserProfileID and UserID