Question

I’m working on a project already started by several developers before me. One thing in particular bothers me is that they have single entity split in two databases.

Entity is called Tracker.

First database is called ConfigBase, and it has table named Trackers that has TrackerId along with it’s attributes.

Second database is called StoreBase, and it also has table named Trackers, whose elements have matching TrackerId as it is in the first base.

Moreover, to have things even more complicated, when you access specific tracker in ConfigBase, you gain SQL server name and credentials that allow you to access it in StoreBase.

Now all this isn’t too much complicated if you use plain old ADO.NET. But as my task is to raise entire solution to newest EF 4.3.1, I’m having troubles maintaining consistency of my entity. Half of things related to Tracker entity are in ConfigBase and the other half in StoreBase, and usually I have to get both to get some result.

Is there any solution to this that does not involve virtual merge on database level. I’m looking for a solution that can be done with Code First modelling.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

No there is no solution provided out of the box because EF itself is even not able to use more than one database per context. So you will either merge your databases or you will access each database separately (with separate Tracker entity per database) and merge data somehow in your application.