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I am using EF 4.0, linq to entities, VS 2010 and SQL Server 2005 Stored Procedures to do a small search application. I have designed the EDM and the required layers. The presentation layer displays the search results properly.

The dilemma now is that the search should be flexible enough to read from different tables. For example, for the present search the application is reading from table A. Tomorrow the application may need to read from table B which may have totally different column names than table A.

Using EDM how can i map table A columns to Table B columns , without having any effect on the presentation layer.

Any suggestions/pointers/links would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you so much for your time and help.

Gert Arnold
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Jacob
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2 Answers2

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I have used the Data Repository explained in the below link it shows the IDataRepositoryand the DataRepository class. also how you can fetch data dynamically using the fetch() and Find() functions

http://huyrua.wordpress.com/2010/07/13/entity-framework-4-poco-repository-and-specification-pattern/

and its working pretty fine

SShebly
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I would recommend decoupling your presentation layer from your data. Create a business layer with a generic class that can be populated from different tables (entities) depending on your needs.

So, depending on the day, the generic class (or classes) would be populated from Table A, or Table B, or table X. However your presentation layer would be oblivious to this and only aware the data from the generic class.

You could design this a number of ways. One way would be to design an interface that the entities must conform to in order to populate the generic class. So no matter what the table structure is, you would need to map the data in it to the interface in order to populate the generic class and hence display it as search results.

OakStreek
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