Question

I’m using EF 4.3 and am hitting an Oracle database. Because of how EF generates SQL for the Oracle database, and because EF 4.3 doesn’t allow adding custom conventions, I have to manually specify column names for each property in ALL CAPS.

[Column("MYPROPERTY")]
public string MyProperty { get; set; }

Well, what can I do about properties that use complex types? I have the following complex type:

public class Minute {
    public int Value { get; set; }
}

and the following DbContext:

public class MyDbContext : DbContext {
    protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder)
    {
        modelBuilder.ComplexType<Minutes>().Property(x => x.Value);
    }
}

And my entity:

[Table("MYENTITY")]
public class MyEntity {
    [Column("MYPROPERTY")]
    public string MyProperty { get; set; }
    [Column("MYMINUTES")] //this does nothing
    public Minutes MyMinutes { get; set; }
}

In the generated SQL, the MyMinutes property is mapped to a non-existent "Extent1"."MyMinutes_Value"… I wanted "Extent1"."MYMINUTES".

What can I do here besides bang my head on my desk?

Answer 1

The answer is fairly simple, but not very well documented. As far as I know, it can’t be done with attributes. Add a line to the datacontext’s OnModelCreating method:

public class MyDbContext : DbContext {
    protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder)
    {
        modelBuilder.ComplexType<Minutes>().Property(x => x.Value);
        modelBuilder.Entity<MyEntity>().Property(x => x.MyMinutes.Value).HasColumnName("MYMINUTES");
    }
}

So, the first line in the method sets up the complex type in general. The second line tells EF how to map the property on the MyEntity class, specifically. Viola!