CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#sqlentity-framework
disasterkid
disasterkid

Reputation: 7278

Is Entity Framework capable of interacting with other databases with unknown table structures?

I have been using EF for my latest project and have enjoyed the ease of programming with it. Although it is slightly harder to setup and uses its own rules on connections, but once in place, treating your database the same as you classes and their methods adds a great layer of simplicity to it.

However, in my case I encountered occasions with which I am still not able to use EF. My program has a main database to work with. That is fine! But it also communicates with other databases on the same server. E.g. it reads data from an outside table that the user specifies inside the program. Those tables are of course not recognized by EF and they have different structures every time. To communicate with those tables I have to resort to normal Sql codes as before. So I feel a little bit between the two worlds.

I am just wondering if it is possible for foreign data to dynamically become part of the Entity Model or whether this foreign data can be accommodated in the framework?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 89

Answers (2)

John Castleman
John Castleman

Reputation: 1561

Give LINQ-to-SQL (L2S) a try; I think you'll find, a lot of what you like about EF is the expressiveness of LINQ-to-Entities (L2E), and the LINQ syntax is the same.

I won't lie to you, though: there does always come a time using L2S where I wished my relations were first class properties on a POCO, but you can't have everything in this situation.

Upvotes: 0

Backs
Backs

Reputation: 24913

As I know, it's impossible. Entity Framework is ORM, so it maps your Model (classe) to database. So if you don't know your Model you can't tell EF how to map it. You should use another approach to communicate with dynamic data.

Upvotes: 3

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