Question

I am using Entity Framework 4 and we have a bunch of stored procedures in our model. Currently we can do everything we need. However we have a new procedure that takes a string, and ultimately performs something such as

Create Procedure usp_RunSearch
  @searchTerm VARCHAR(2000)
AS
BEGIN
  DECLARE @sql VARCHAR(4000)
  SET @sql = '
  SELECT ID,
         NAME
  FROM   Users'

  IF(ISNULL(@searchTerm, '') != '')
  BEGIN
    SET @sql = @sql + 'WHERE ' + @searchTerm
  END

  Exec (@sql)
END

to return the result-set.

EF does not seem to be able to interrogate this procedure to get the resultant column list.

Is there anything i can do to help EF get over this hurdle?

Answer 1

In the end i have created a ComplexType by hand in the EDMX and setup the function import for the stored procedure to use this manually defined complex type. I think that when EF inspects the sproc it can’t figure the return set of columns, even though the select list is relatively static in my example.