Question

I’m getting a cyclical reference error on creating a db the against SqlCe4.0 client in EF Code First 4.3. I have attached a picture of my desired db schema, to be clear. FYI, I have successfully created my desired schema in SQL Server 2008.

The referential relationship will result in a cyclical reference that is not allowed. [ Constraint name = FK_Routes_Seasons_SeasonID ]

• Routes has a 1-many relationship to Seasons
• Contracts has a 1-many relationship to Routes
• Contracts has a 1-many relationship to Seasons

My code for the classes is:

Public Class Route
    Public Property RouteID as Integer

    Public Property SeasonID as Integer
    Public Overridable Property Season As Season

    Public Overridable Property Contracts As ICollection(Of Contract)
End Class

Public Class Season
    Public Property SeasonID as Integer

    Public Overridable Property Routes As ICollection(Of Routes)
    Public Overridable Property Contracts As ICollection(Of Contract)
End Class

Public Class Contract
    Public Property ContractID As Integer

    Public Property RouteID As Integer
    Public Overridable Property Route As Route

    Public Property SeasonID As Integer
    Public Overridable Property Season As Season
End Class

Answer 1

It’s not necessarily that it’s cyclical, but that you’re having multiple references in the same table in a delete tree. See this post and this post

In your table its:

Season -> Routes -> Contracts

Season -> Contracts

You’ll need to set it so that one of these relationships does not cascade delete. I’m not familiar with VB, but in C# you could setup fluent like this:

modelBuilder.Entity<Routes >()
            .HasRequired(r => r.Season )
            .WithMany(s => s.Routes)
            .HasForeignKey(r => r.SeasonID );
            .WillCascadeOnDelete(false);