Question

I successfully created my first Entity Framework Code first project using SQL Server CE. The database tables were created automatically and all was well.

I then changed my connection string to point to a SQL Server database I’d created and expected it to autogenerate the tables. It didn’t and instead complained about the tables not existing.

After some reading I found that I needed to add an initializer to my App_Start method.

I tried:

// Method 1
Database.SetInitializer(new DropCreateDatabaseIfModelChanges<EFContext>());

But this didn’t work at first because it couldn’t find an EdmMetaData table to discover if the model had changed.

So I tried adding:

// Method 2
Database.SetInitializer(new CreateDatabaseIfNotExists<EFContext>());

But this didn’t work because I’d already created the database, and when I removed the database it still didn’t work because the user I was logging in as didn’t have create database privileges.

I finally tried:

// Method 3
Database.SetInitializer(new DropCreateDatabaseAlways<EFContext>());

Which worked, but I don’t really want to drop the db every time. So once it ran and added the EdmMetaData table I replaced it with method 1 and that now works fine.

Although this method works, it doesn’t feel as elegant as when I was using SQL Server CE and I’ve not found someone suggesting that you use this method.

So, am I missing something and is there an easier, more elegant way to do this?

Answer 1

Method 1 and 2 expects that database doesn’t exist yet. They don’t work if you create database manually. If you need EF to create tables in existing database you must create custom database initializer.