Question

I have some old code which didn’t use database. Now can database schema be auto-generated from existing classes? I know this seems reverse than usual DB to class generation.

But it would be good if there is some easy way to do so.

Answer 1

Sure, with a little reflection you could generate some rough table creation scripts, and even stored procedures to support INSERTS/UPDATES/DELETES (if you wished).

Unless there is an exact one-to-one mapping, you will need to clean up those scripts by hand.

EDIT: to elaborate on this further (in conjunction with @TomTom’s answer)

Things that will be difficult/impossible to infer automatically:

• default column values
• computed columns (if any)
• varchar sizes
• NULL/NOT NULL columns
• indexes

Things that you could do automatically with a bunch of work (but better to do by hand, IMO):

• primary key assignment
• foreign key relationships
• relationships