Home/ Questions/Q 152127
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-11T09:34:04+00:00

I have the following schema in the database: BillingReferences (ReferencingType tinyint , ReferencingId tinyint

  • 0

I have the following schema in the database:

  • BillingReferences (ReferencingType tinyint, ReferencingId tinyint, ReferencedType tinyint, ReferencedId tinyint, IsActive bit) – where all fields (except IsActive) are part of a Unique Index.
  • BillingType (BillingTypeId tinyint, Name varchar(50))

ReferencingType and ReferencedType is a foreign key of BillingTypes. BillingTypes contains the following rows:

BillingTypeId | Name

1 | Labels

2 | Countries

3 | PaymentProviders

4 | PaymentOptions

5 | Banks

ReferecingId and ReferencedId represent the Id of one of the following entities (depends on the Referenced/Referencing Type):

  • Banks (BankId tinyint, Name varchar(50))
  • Countries (CountryId tinyint, Name varchar(50))
  • Labels (LabelId tinyint, Name varchar(50))
  • PaymentProviders (PaymentProviderId tinyint, Name varchar(50))
  • PaymentOptions (PaymentOptionId tinyint, Name varchar(50))

In the future each entity will have some more different columns added but for now this is the schema for simplicity.

There’s a connection of (1-) between every entity (except countries) to countries. Labels have a connection of (1-) to Banks, PaymentProviders and PaymentOptions. And PaymentProviders have a connection of (1-*) to PaymentProviders

So for example if I want to connect a bank with BankId 201 to a country with CountryId 3003 I will have a record in BillingReferences that will look like that: ReferencingType = 5 ReferencingId = 201 ReferencedType = 2 ReferencedId = 3003 IsActive = 1

We didn’t make a connection/reference table for each type of connection because of extendability consideration – If we want to add another entity all we have to do is add its table and add records for it in BillingReferences and BillingType.

The problem is that I can’t configure a conditional foreign key between BillingReferences and each of the entities and I can’t seem to configure/map it with EntityFramework either…

I was unable to find any tutorial or example that uses this type of implementation. Am I bound to create a reference table for each connection, or is there a way to configure this with EntityFramework?

Thanks for the help 🙂

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. AFAIK, there’s isn’t a way to do this.

    I’d go with creating a seperate table for each type, unless you really have a good reason not to. The consideration you mention isn’t a good one, IMHO.

    Having more tables DOES allow you to put foreign key constraints on your keys, and it translates nicely into the EF. It also helps performance: your big ass reference table with one million rows will take more time to query than more smaller tables (unless you ALWAYS want all references for a type).

    • 0