Programming Entity Framework: Code First

Chapter 7. Advanced Concepts

The Code First modeling functionality that you have seen so far should be enough to get you up and running with most applications. However, Code First also includes some more advanced functionality that you may require as your needs advance. Throughout this book you’ve seen Code First’s conventions in action, but if there are one or more conventions you don’t like, Code First allows you to remove them. You may also want to get rid of that EdmMetadata table Code First is adding to your database. Code First caches its model by default, and it’s possible to override that behavior to solve problems like targeting multiple database providers in the same application instance. This chapter will cover these topics and more.

Mapping to Nontable Database Objects

So far you have used Code First to map to tables, whether you are generating a database or mapping to tables in an existing database. But databases support many other types of objects, including stored procedures and views.

As of Entity Framework 4.2, Code First only has built-in support for tables, meaning that it is only capable of generating schemas that contain tables. Therefore, if you are using Code First to generate your database, you are restricted to tables.

However, if you are mapping to an existing database, you may have views, stored procedures, and other objects in the database you are mapping to. Let’s take a look at how we can interact with those.

Note

You have the option of manually editing the ...