Question

I have a table in my database called SEntries (see below the CREATE TABLE statement). It has a primary key, a couple of foreign keys and nothing special about it. I have many tables in my database similar to that one, but for some reason, this table ended up with a “Discriminator” column on the EF Proxy Class.

This is how the class is declared in C#:

public class SEntry
{
    public long SEntryId { get; set; }

    public long OriginatorId { get; set; }
    public DateTime DatePosted { get; set; }
    public string Message { get; set; }
    public byte DataEntrySource { get; set; }
    public string SourceLink { get; set; }
    public int SourceAppId { get; set; }
    public int? LocationId { get; set; }
    public long? ActivityId { get; set; }
    public short OriginatorObjectTypeId { get; set; }
}

public class EMData : DbContext
{
    public DbSet<SEntry> SEntries { get; set; }
            ...
    }

When I try to add a new row to that table, I get the error:

System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Invalid column name 'Discriminator'.

This problem only occurs if you are inheriting your C# class from another class, but SEntry is not inheriting from anything (as you can see above).

In addition to that, once I get the tool-tip on the debugger when I mouse over the EMData instance for the SEntries property, it displays:

base {System.Data.Entity.Infrastructure.DbQuery<EM.SEntry>} = {SELECT 
[Extent1].[Discriminator] AS [Discriminator], 
[Extent1].[SEntryId] AS [SEntryId], 
[Extent1].[OriginatorId] AS [OriginatorId], 
[Extent1].[DatePosted] AS [DatePosted], 
[Extent1].[Message] AS [Message], 
[Extent1].[DataEntrySource] AS [DataE...

Any suggestions or ideas where to get to the bottom of this issue? I tried renaming the table, the primary key and a few other things, but nothing works.

SQL-Table:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[SEntries](
[SEntryId] [bigint] IDENTITY(1125899906842624,1) NOT NULL,
[OriginatorId] [bigint] NOT NULL,
[DatePosted] [datetime] NOT NULL,
[Message] [nvarchar](500) NOT NULL,
[DataEntrySource] [tinyint] NOT NULL,
[SourceLink] [nvarchar](100) NULL,
[SourceAppId] [int] NOT NULL,
[LocationId] [int] NULL,
[ActivityId] [bigint] NULL,
[OriginatorObjectTypeId] [smallint] NOT NULL,
CONSTRAINT [PK_SEntries] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED 
(
[SEntryId] ASC
)WITH (PAD_INDEX  = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE  = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF,       ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS  = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS  = ON) ON [PRIMARY]
) ON [PRIMARY]

GO

ALTER TABLE [dbo].[SEntries]  WITH CHECK ADD  CONSTRAINT [FK_SEntries_ObjectTypes] FOREIGN KEY([OriginatorObjectTypeId])
REFERENCES [dbo].[ObjectTypes] ([ObjectTypeId])
GO

ALTER TABLE [dbo].[SEntries] CHECK CONSTRAINT [FK_SEntries_ObjectTypes]
GO

ALTER TABLE [dbo].[SEntries]  WITH CHECK ADD  CONSTRAINT [FK_SEntries_SourceApps] FOREIGN KEY([SourceAppId])
REFERENCES [dbo].[SourceApps] ([SourceAppId])
GO

ALTER TABLE [dbo].[SEntries] CHECK CONSTRAINT [FK_SEntries_SourceApps]
GO

Answer 1

Turns out that Entity Framework will assume that any class that inherits from a POCO class that is mapped to a table on the database requires a Discriminator column, even if the derived class will not be saved to the DB.

The solution is quite simple and you just need to add [NotMapped] as an attribute of the derived class.

Example:

class Person
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

[NotMapped]
class PersonViewModel : Person
{
    public bool UpdateProfile { get; set; }
}

Now, even if you map the Person class to the Person table on the database, a “Discriminator” column will not be created because the derived class has [NotMapped].

As an additional tip, you can use [NotMapped] to properties you don’t want to map to a field on the DB.