I've had a number of problems with Entity Framework Migrations getting out of whack to the point were I can't get the database and the migrations into sync to accept new changes. I've found that rather than spending hours fixing out of whack migrations it's sometimes much easier to simply wipe the slate clean and create a new initial migration. This post describes the steps on how to remove existing migrations and create a new initial migration from the current schema.

Spatial data has been available for a while in SQL Server, but if you wanted to use it with Entiry Framework you had to jump through some hoops. In this post I show how basic SQL Spatial data works and then how you can utilize the new features in EF 5.0 to directly access spatial data using your CodeFirst models.

Custom dynamic types in .NET are great to wrap other data structures into easier to use and cleaner object.property interfaces. In this post I demonstrate how you can create a dynamic DataReader that allows access to a DataReader's fields using plain object.property syntax.

LINQ to SQL expects every table to be mapped to have primary keys which is reasonable. However, today I ran into a problem with an existing database and a many to many relationship which did not have a Pk in the link table. The model and underlying XML seemed to map this just fine, however, the actual generated code did not approve of this arrangement.

Using explicit Transactions with Linq to Sql is fairly rare but when you need them you'll find that it natively doesn't provide manual transaction management. Rather you have to rely on the TransactionScope class to provide transaction wrapping. Here's a contrived example, and a couple of different transaction scenarios using TransactionScope to manage multiple L2S data operation as a single transaction.

OleDb – what a blast from the past. Got a couple of basic questions in the last week on how to access FoxPro data from .NET via OleDb and both questions got tripped up with the parameters query parameter are passed. It’s been so long since I’ve used the OleDb driver I had to look this up again myself to remember how this works  through FoxPro OleDb. The issue is that the VFP OleDb driver...

Silverlight sports a host of 'data access' mechanisms that allow consumption of data from the server. However, if the data is highly dynamic and changeable the combination of a lack of dynamic data retrieval mechanisms, plus use of a static language like C# has made me wonder how to best approach the data access for a very dynamic application.

Using LINQ to SQL in some scenarios where dynamic expresions are required on the right side of a LINQ query expression can be tricky. How do you for example allow a query to use a dynamic field in a query and then query its data? Due to the strong typed nature of LINQ direct LINQ syntax can't be used for this sort of query, but there are a several ways to work around this by using dynamic expressions.

I just got had by an odd behavior in the LINQ to SQL model designer when working with a LINQ to SQL Model in a separate class library project. I use LINQ to SQL in a business layer which always lives in a separate assembly and so the model does not live in the same project as the Web (or other)...

Ok, so I thought I had the detached entity state in LINQ to SQL figured out, only to have that thrown back into my face. The word from Microsoft is that if you have an entity that was loaded through a LINQ to SQL DataContext at any point it cannot be re-attached to the DataContext.

I've been talking about how I'm using a small business object wrapper around LINQ to SQL to provide better abstraction of the LINQ to SQL functionality and I suppose the time's come to be bit more specific. This is going to be a long post with a fair bit of code and a brief discussion of the whys and hows...

Using LINQ to SQL for queries out of a business layer has some cool benefits in that core business layer queries returned from business objects can further refine query before the final query operates against the database. This allows the client to perform common formatting like picking which fields to retrieve, changing order or applying a final front end filter on the data. It also allows the client to choose best to represent the query results as an entity list or data reader/data table etc. This entry shows a few ways of how this has advantages and how a business object can greatly facilitate the data serving process.

I'm mucking around with a bit of code today that's using AJAX and returning some data from my business layer that's using LINQ to SQL Entities. I mentioned some time that one issue that I ran into and continue to bump my head against is that LINQ to SQL has big issues serializing its entities. The...

I've been experimenting with LINQ to SQL for the last few weeks and there's a lot to like as well as a few things to think about. In this editorial I'll describe some of the things that worked well and some of the issues I struggled with and how I worked around them.

LINQ to SQL provides entity objects that can be used easily for object access to data members. But these objects can be difficult to deal with if you need to serialize them in Web Services or in other ways because relationships are often circular. Here's a discussion of things to watch out for and how you can get around the issues.