Question

The steps I go through…

• Add new ADO.NET Entity Data Model > Generate from DB > Setup new connection string to adventureworks db > Next > Select table “DatabaseLog” > Finish. Verify DatabaseLog is visible in the edmx view.

• Right click controller > Add controller

• Template
  Controller with read/write actions and views, using Entity

• Model class
  AdventureWorksDWEntities

• Context
  New data Context > Accept default name

• View
  Razor

• Click Add.

Produce Error:
“Unable to retrieve metadata for ‘DatabaseDocumentor.models.AdventureWorksDWEntities’.

• System.Data.Edm.EdmEntityeType: EntityType ‘AdventureWorksDWEntities’ has no key defined. Define the key for this entitytype.

• System.Data.Edm.EdmEntitySet: EntityType: EntitySet ‘AdventureWorksDWEntities’ is based on type ‘AdventureWorksDWEntities’ that has no keys defined.

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I tried again using AdventureWorks (not AdventureWorksDW) and this time it worked. But, I still don’t understand what to pick when generating a controller. I have 3 options:

Template
Here I picked Controller with read/write actions and views, using Entity. This is easy enough to understand. I want to have my tables generated for me so I pick this option.

Model
This is what I want to model. In this case I want to model the “Department” table. So I choose Department.

Context
This one is real fuzzy to me. I chose *Name*Entities. This is the value in the web.config connection strings area. Why do I need to choose my connection string as the context? I only know context as “an object that I use to get to my entities” in C#. So, here it’s hard for me to visualize. Do I need to always choose my connection string for the context?

Answer 1

This issue can occur when the Context is not correctly chosen from the dropdown. The context should be the value stored in the web.config

<add name="NamedEntitiesCs1"

that also contains the Model you want to generate.