I’m developing a new application which is based on a legacy database. The old legacy database does not use reference integrity and first we try to not change the existing schema. I still want to be be able to use navigation properties in my EF generated POCO classes.
However, the old data model has one big issue regarding child-parent relationships: the column in the child table is referencing the parent table via the uniqe key of the parent, not via the primary key of the parent table. Is it still possible to generate such associations?
I tried to mark the unique key in the parent table as “entity key” but then I still need to provide a mapping for the parent table’s primary key which I am not able to because there is no mapping for it available, this primary is just a dummy “counter”. If I do not provide a mapping for the primary key, I get
“Error 111: Properties referred by the Principal Role XXX must be exactly identical to the key of the EntityType YYY referred to by the Principal Role in the relationship constraint for Relationship ZZZ. Make sure all the key properties are specified in the Principal Role”
No EF does not support unique keys at all. It is hopefully planned feature of the next major release.