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First question to SO, I hope I'm doing this right. ;)

Regarding System.Data.Entity.Design.EntityStoreSchemaFilterEntry :

I'm looking for some detailed documentation on this class. The MSDN docs have nothing but an indication of what properties exist and their data types. I want to create a well-defined list of filters for

EntityStoreSchemaGenerator.GenerateStoreMetadata(
   IEnumerable<EntityStoreSchemaFilterEntry> filters
)

Specifically:

  • Do we need to set all Excludes before the Allows so that Allow entries are the only ones that are returned?
  • What are the consequences of using null in any of the parameters? What about empty string "" ? Comments about this seem to be conflicting and don't match my experience with their usage.
  • Is the proper "all" wildcard a simple "%"?

My goal is to Exclude all Tables, Views, and Filters, then Allow just the ones that I want. If I try to do this I get an edmx file with no entities. It seems my Exclude All takes precedence over all of the tables that I tried to include. If I don't try to exclude tables that I don't want, I get the tables I've Allowed plus all other tables in the database, which sort of renders filtering useless.

For reference, the only info I can find about proper wildcard patterns for filters is here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms710171(VS.85).aspx

Note that I've gone way beyond EdmGen, noted bugs and limitations in EdmGen2, and am now trying to accomplish what I need with a majorly extended EdmGen2 base.

Thanks!

Related keywords to assist people searching on this topic:

AEF ADO.NET Entity Framework
Tables Views Functions
EntityStoreSchemaFilterObjectTypes EntityStoreSchemaFilterEffect
EntityStoreSchemaGenerator GenerateStoreMetadata
EntityModelSchemaGenerator
SSDL CSDL MSL EDMX
EdmGen EdmGen2
TonyG
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  • Did you get anywhere with this? I also have an updated version of the EdmGen2 code base and am looking for ways to limit the tables used by ModelGens call to GenerateStoreMetadata. – Daniel Ballinger Sep 05 '11 at 00:41

1 Answers1

1

I found the follow filters were sufficient to generate the SSDL for a single table.

List<EntityStoreSchemaFilterEntry> filters = new List<EntityStoreSchemaFilterEntry>();
// Just generate for the Document table.
filters.Add(new EntityStoreSchemaFilterEntry(null, "dbo", "TargetTableNameHere", EntityStoreSchemaFilterObjectTypes.Table, EntityStoreSchemaFilterEffect.Allow));
filters.Add(new EntityStoreSchemaFilterEntry(null, "dbo", "%", EntityStoreSchemaFilterObjectTypes.Function, EntityStoreSchemaFilterEffect.Exclude));

// generate the SSDL
string ssdlNamespace = modelName + "Model.Store";
EntityStoreSchemaGenerator essg = new EntityStoreSchemaGenerator(provider, connectionString, ssdlNamespace);
essg.GenerateForeignKeyProperties = includeForeignKeys;

IList<EdmSchemaError> ssdlErrors = essg.GenerateStoreMetadata(filters, version);

I only needed to explicitly exclude the functions.

Daniel Ballinger
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  • Thanks to referenceSource, [here](http://referencesource.microsoft.com/#System.Data.Entity.Design/System/Data/Entity/Design/SSDLGenerator/EntityStoreSchemaGeneratorDatabaseSchemaLoader.cs,204) is one of the locations filters are used to build the SQL query. Basically, if you have a "allow" on a FilterObjectType it will only include those explicitly matching. Thus you should have a "exclude" on any ObjectTypes you did not already filter with your "allow"s. Hope that makes sense. Thanks for this answer, led me to the information I needed. – admalledd Jul 13 '16 at 18:49