Question

I am writing integration tests to verify the behaviour in my repositories. The problem I run into is that I want to start with a clean database for every test. I managed to do so by writing the SetUp as follows:

    [SetUp]
    public void SetUp()
    {
        _applicationContext = new TestApplicationContext();

        _applicationContext.Database.Connection.Close();
        _applicationContext.Database.Delete();
        _applicationContext.Database.Create();

        _tenantRepository = new TenantRepository(_applicationContext);
        _userRepository = new UserRepository(_applicationContext);
    }

The TestApplicationContext sets the database name to TestDatabase.

This works fine until I want to check the actual database for the result of my test. Then I make a connection from MSSQL server to the same database, which won’t close until I either:

• shut down MSSQL server
• delete the database with the option “close all connections”

The only way I found is via SQL commands. Maybe it’s because of my n00b knowledge regarding MSSQL, but I was kinda hoping for a “close connection” button / option.

How can I close the connection to the database from MSSQL server?
Or, is there a way I can do this programmatically from C#?

UPDATE:

Maybe I wasn’t very clear. But the test SetUp fails after I opened MSSQL and viewed the contents of a table. This is because MSSQL also creates a connection to the TestDatabase, and my integration test is not able to close that connection. So I am looking for a solution that allows me to close the connection I created from MSSQL server.

Answer 1

You can work around the connection problem if instead of dropping and re-creating whole database you just drop and re-create selected (or all tables).

You could create little script that will do it for you in a way that you do not need to hard-code table names:
http://www.apexure.com/blog/2010/07/29/delete-all-tables-in-sql-server-database/

Alternatively, Julia Lerman in her book “Programming Entity Framework: Code First” mentiones this approach in more mature form, as incorporated as a custom database initializer:

As well as writing your own custom initializers, you can also find
initializers that other people have created. One example of this is
available in the EFCodeFirst.CreateTablesOnly NuGet package. This
initializer will allow you to drop and create the tables in an
existing database, rather than dropping and creating the actual
database itself. This is particularly useful if you are targeting a
hosted database where you don’t have permission to drop or create the
entire database.