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Now let's take a look at the Model First workflow, which reverses the process of defining your model and connecting to a database.
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With the Model First workflow
the second workflow that EF supported,
0:00
the process of defining your model and
connecting to a database is reversed.
0:03
You start with an empty Model and
use the EF Designer within
0:08
Visual Studio to define the entities and
the relationships between them.
0:12
As with the database
workflow the entity and
0:17
context classes are generated
from the model.
0:20
But unlike that workflow, the database
is also generated from the model.
0:23
The model can be changed
during development but
0:28
the database will be dropped and
0:31
recreated when flowing the changes
from the application to the database.
0:33
Because of this, once an app goes
into production the model becomes
0:37
need only from the application side.
0:42
There are workarounds to this limitation,
but
0:44
they require some extra
effort to implement.
0:47
See the teachers notes for
more information.
0:50
Here's an example model
in the EF designer.
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When using the Model First workflow,
0:56
you add an ADO.NET entity data model item to your project and
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select the empty EF Designer model option,
in the first step of the wizard.
1:03
Then, you use a combination of
the toolbox, and properties windows,
1:08
to create entities, and
entity associations.
1:14
You can also add new items,
1:18
by right clicking in an empty space on
the EF Designer, and selecting, Add New.
1:20
Our model contains contact and
contact email entities
1:26
as well as an association or
relationship between the two entities.
1:32
We'll be taking a closer
look at how to define or
1:37
create relationships in a later section.
1:40
Once we have our model like we wanted, we
can generate the database from our model.
1:44
Right-click on EF Designer and
select Generate Database from Model.
1:48
Here's the data connection that
we created in the previous video.
1:55
Let's create a new connection in
order to change the database name.
1:59
I'll enter the server name from
my localbb database server,
2:05
(localdb)\MSSQLLocalDB, and the name for
2:13
the new database, ModelFIrstTestDB.
2:20
And click OK.
2:26
We'll be prompted if we want
to create the database,
2:30
which is what we want to do,
so I'll answer Yes.
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In the last step, the wizard will
show us a preview of the DDL, or
2:39
data definition language,
that was generated from our model.
2:44
This DDL is a set of SQL commands that
can be used to create our database.
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Click Finish to close the Wizard.
2:55
We need to execute our DDL script in
order to create our database tables.
2:58
Click the Execute icon here on
the left of this toolbar and
3:04
connect to the database by selecting
the server and the database.
3:08
In the message window, we can see that
the commands completed successfully.
3:19
Notice that after we
generated our database,
3:30
we now have two co-generation templates.
3:33
One to generate the entity classes and
another to generate the context class.
3:36
When we save our model, Visual Studio will
generate our entity and context classes.
3:43
Here's our contact and contact email
entities and here's our context class.
3:51
When making changes to the model, it's
possible to edit the EDMX file directly,
4:02
instead of using the visual designer.
4:07
Right click on the EDMX file,
and select, Open With.
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Then, select XML (Text) Editor.
4:14
When editing the EDMX file directly,
4:18
we can see that the file is
organized into three parts.
4:21
The storage models,
the conceptual models, and
4:26
the mappings between the storage and
conceptual models.
4:32
When using the database first or model
first workflows, modifying or extending
4:38
the generated entity in contents classes
means customizing the code generation
4:44
templates that are used to generate these
classes or creating partial classes.
4:49
Partial classes are defined
using the partial keyword
5:01
right here before the class keyword.
5:04
This allows you to provide the definition
of the class across one or
5:07
more physical files.
5:12
That way, one file can be
the file that EF generates and
5:13
another can be a file that we add
additional properties and methods to.
5:17
So while you can customize the generated
in a DE in context classes,
5:23
developers generally just want
to work directly with the code
5:27
instead of fiddling around
with the visual designer.
5:30
Also, when using the Model First workflow,
5:33
keeping your model in sync with your
database can be a tedious process.
5:36
The code first workflow was
created to resolve these issues.
5:40
After the break, we'll introduce
the code first workflow and
5:45
add our first entity to our project.
5:48
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