Question

I have an existing MVC3 application and database that is on a SQL Server 2008 R2 and I had to add a bool item to an existing model.

After I added it to the model, I rebuilt and published the project. Then I opened up SQL Server Management Studio and went to the table and added the entry to the column as a bit, I had to make it nullable since the table already contains data.

I thought this would be all that I would need to do to get everything working. However I got this error:

The model backing the ‘psllc_DB’ context has changed since the database was created. Either manually delete/update the database, or call Database.SetInitializer with an IDatabaseInitializer instance. For example, the DropCreateDatabaseIfModelChanges strategy will automatically delete and recreate the database, and optionally seed it with new data.

I’m not sure what else to do, I went back to the code and changed the bool to bool? so it will be nullable but this didn’t help either. I can’t drop the entire database since it’s full of data, however as a last ditch possibility I could drop this table and re-create it cause it only has a few entries, but I don’t know if that will work. I’m not sure what else to do so any advice would be very appreciated.

---

Update

Since I’m not getting any responses, let me rephrase my question.

How should I update my database (a SQL Express mdf file) to add a bool Column to a Table that has data already? I need the database to match my updated MVC 3 Entity Code First model otherwise I get the above error.

Thanks

Answer 1

Since this is code-first, you should do this code-first: change the class and use EF-migrations to change the database. The way you do it, the model and the database may match, but the meta information in the database is not updated.

By the way, if you supply a default value, you can add a non-nullable column.