Entity Designer Database Generation Power Pack
If you like Model-First design in Entity Framework, you’re going to love the Entity Designer Database Generation Power Pack. The original Database Generation feature in the Entity Designer in VS 2010 is extensible via Windows Workflows and T4 Templates. This Power Pack builds on these extensibility mechanisms and introduces the following:
- Basic Table-per-Hierarchy support. This is represented by the “Generate T-SQL via T4 (TPH)” workflow.
- The SSDL and MSL generation pieces can now be tweaked through T4 templates, both in TPH and TPT strategies through the “Generate T-SQL via T4 (TPT)” and “Generate T-SQL via T4 (TPH)” workflows.
- Direct deployment and data/schema migration are available through the “Generate Migration T-SQL and Deploy” workflow. This workflow will use the Team System Data APIs to diff our default T-SQL script against the target database and create a new script which will perform non-invasive ALTERs and data migration where necessary.
- A new user interface will now display when “Generate Database from Model” is selected — this acts as a “workflow manager” which will present to you our default workflows and allow you to create your own, customizable workflows based on your own strategy, script generation, and deployment requirements.
Highly recommended. Enjoy!