Question

Let’s say I have the following tables setup in SQL Server (2008)

Is there a way to generate the EDMX such that in my project Height, Weight and Age are properties of a public non entity class called Characteristics and that in code, I can address them as

ABoy.Characteristics.Height
ABoy.Characteristics.Weight
ABoy.Characteristics.Age

AGirl.Characteristics.Height
AGirl.Characteristics.Weight
AGirl.Characteristics.Age

I want to do this, because in my actual case, there other methods on my Characteristic class.
I do not want a common table, because Characteristic need not necessarily be tracked by EF unless they are added to a BOY or GIRL class.

EDIT: Writing this down made me realize that I could just have a partial class with a Characteristic type exposed for BOY and GIRL and it would just return an object of type Characteristic. I would also have a tracker to always return the same object per instance of BOY or GIRL and to update it if a modification came in.
I’ll leave this open for other suggestions.

Answer 1

You can also accomplish while allowing standard EF CRUD operations by using Table-per-type inheritance where your base type may look like:

Person
{
  public <guid/int> ID { get; set; }
  public <type> Height { get; set; }
  public <type> Weight { get; set; }
  public <type> Age { get; set; }
}

with Inheritence Tables types:

Boy
{
  public <guid/int> ID { get; set; }
}

Girl
{
  public <guid/int> ID { get; set; }
}

(3 tables total)

Allowing you to do standard operation in EF pretty effectively. I’d also highly recommend reading up on the performance of Type per Table inheritance, although with a simple table structure like this it shouldn’t hinder you.