I've got an application in Visual Studio 2012 written in C# that generates code for a aspNet MVC application. I've generated the edmx file but when I try to open it, Visual Studio tells me that it was unable to display the file and asks if I want to open it with XML editor.
I also generated the appropriate "Context.cs" and "Designer.cs" files.
I manage to open other edmx files in a diagram visualization.
What I want to know is: what are the requisites to open it and see it in a diagram form? Are there support files I'm missing?
The EDMX file is not just XML representing the database structure / mapping but also how the Visual Studio designer should render the diagram (where to place tables, associations etc).
I found this project that creates EDMX files programatically (I have NO affiliation with this and found it through good ol' Google).
Has written here:
Entity Framework 5 uses versions 3.0 of CSDL, MSL, and SSDL specifications.
Each Visual Studio version has its own CSDL, MSL and SSDL specifications:
Visual Studio 2008 uses EDMX v1
Visual Studio 2010 uses EDMX v2
Visual Studio 2012 uses EDMX v3
Have a look at the section Changes in CSDL, MSL & SSDL 3.0 (EF5) from the link above to see what need to be changed in your EDMX generation process to be able to open it with VS2012.
Related
My database has more than 500 tables. It's very slow to open its EDMX file in Visual Studio. Moreover, I cannot select multiple models to delete them. VS either allows to delete models individually or all at once.
I would like to write a script that can use the VS EDMX Designer Tool to drop/add multiple models without opening the diagram and interacting manually with the tool.
I'm using Visual Studio 2017 and Entity Framework 6, and for the life of me, I cannot find the EDMX file, Entity Data Tools, Model Browser, or Entity Designer...
Am I losing my mind here? I've created multiple new projects trying to find these UI-based tools for working with the Entity Framework data models and can't seem to get anywhere.
Please help!
I believe I have the correct tools installed in the VS2017 Install:
For anyone looking at this, in my case the answer was that I was using a Code-First implementation of the Entity Framework, which apparently does NOT give you access to the Visual Tools.
So there is no EDMX file in Code-First Entity Framework.
I had similar issue. I reinstalled Entity Framework 6 tools without luck, even reinstalled SQL tools (sorry, forgot exact name). But solution was very simple:
right-click the edmx file-> choose Open with->choose ADO.NET Entity
Data Model Designer
At the installation of VS2017 you had to go to Individual Components to install those tools, don't think they are installed by default.
Individual Components
SDK, Libraries and Components
You can run this install from the VS Installer
Entity Framework not appearing in Add New Item list in Visual Studio 2017
Please also see the current documentation. They state that for current Visual Studio versions, the tools will be included. For previous versions, separate installers (MSI packages, not extensions) are available for download at the Microsoft Download Center. F.e., see Visual Studio Releases > Visual Studio 2013, which will tell you where to find the MSI for Visual Studio 2013.
As in response to gotmike's accepted answer, today there's an 3rd party marketplace extension called Entity Framework Visual Editor, which can be used (I didn't try it myself) to generate a visual representation out of the code first model/POCO classes.
Also note that the Entity Framework Power Tools always had the feature to preview code first entities in a designer view called "View Entity Data Model (Read-only)". This option appears in your context menu when you select a model class derived from DbContext.
I am not able to show SQLite option while I'm going to add Entity framework via wizard in Visual Studio 2012 and Framework 4.5.
I have used below link:
http://system.data.sqlite.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/downloads.wiki
but still I'm not able to show it.
There is no need to add Sqlite from wizard,you just need to add the .dll to your File System Editor while making a deployment. Here is the full tutorial of how you can achieve this.
include sqlite while build setup exe
Hope it helps.
I have installed the latest Entity Framework version (EntityFramework.6.1.3) in VS2015. I have added the EF in the project and deleted the 2 .tt files (edmx_file_name.tt and edmx_file_name.Context.tt) as they were from the DBContext.
Now I am trying to add the EF 6.x code generation template by open the model in the EF Designer, right-click on the design surface and select Add Code Generation Item.
To add the Code Generation in ObjectContext i need to install the EF 6.x EntityObject Generator. I downloaded it from here.
But it I couldn't install it in VS 2015.
How do I solve this?
Well, for all those poor souls like me that no longer have VS2013 installed, there's much easier option. You can just install the EF 6.x EntityObject Generator for C# for VS2015.
Sure, the VSIX will shout at you that it's not meant for 2015. Just ignore it :)
The fact that it is not supported or advertised as "compatible with VS2015" does not imply that it does not work. It's a pack of T4 templates. Their syntax or features have not changed much since then.
Download the VSIX from marketplace, save it somewhere, unzip it (that's just a ZIP archive) and then edit file called: extension.vsixmanifest. Inside you will find such block:
<SupportedProducts>
<VisualStudio Version="10.0">
<Edition>VCSExpress</Edition>
<Edition>VWDExpress</Edition>
<Edition>Pro</Edition>
</VisualStudio>
<VisualStudio Version="11.0">
<Edition>VCSExpress</Edition>
<Edition>VWDExpress</Edition>
<Edition>Pro</Edition>
</VisualStudio>
<VisualStudio Version="12.0">
<Edition>VCSExpress</Edition>
<Edition>VWDExpress</Edition>
<Edition>Pro</Edition>
</VisualStudio>
</SupportedProducts>
Copy, paste, add a block for Version="13.0", and maybe futher too (14.0=VS2017?), save, ZIP it back, change extension to .vsix and try to install.
Worked for me on VS2015, installed with no problems, added EntityObject T4 templates, and generated code from EDMX as it was supposed to.
Since until now, no EntityObject Generator Template is supported in Visual Studio 2015, the alter solution is, open your solution with Visual Studio 2013, then open your edmx diagram, right click, select "Add Code generation Item", you will see "EF 6.X EntityObject Generator", if you cannot see it, go to "online" menu, and you will see "EF 6.x EntityObject Generator For C#" display. Select the EntityObject Generator and click "Add" button to add it to you data access layer project. The tt will auto generate EntityObject classes for you. Save the project, exit visual studio 2013. Reopen the solution with visual studio 2015. Done.
Microsoft has removed class diagram generation from codes using reverse engineering.I want to move an auto-generated class diagram using VS2012 to VS2015 project but I didn't find a solution doing that.Saving generated class diagram in an .classdiagram file and then import that to another project will fail with error :
Cannot Load 'D:\...\ClassDiagram1.classdiagram': You must open this UML diagram inside the Visual Studio modeling project that was used to create it"
Any suggestion for doing that?
I found the solution myself.I saved the complete UML project then open that in VS2015 and copy paste the class diagram to my VS2015 project.