I have no idea where to post suggestions so doing so here. I have a record with a nullable FK. EF threw an exception building the database because that FK could lead to a cyclical cascade on deletes. The issue was not with deleting the record, it was with deleting the record the FK pointed to. The thing is, deleting that pointed to record is, by definition in the design of my code, a bug. So what is needed is the ability to specify that deleting a record pointed to by that FK is not allowed. And if that is attempted, an exception should be thrown at run time. But with this restriction, then the database can be built. I have a model (Event) that numerous models (State, County, etc.) have a collection of. EF won't build the database because State also has a collection of County and so it's worried deleting State will delete its Events, its Counties, and that Counties Events - which might be the same Event. What's needed here is a way of telling EF that a given Event will be in exactly 1 collection. An evetn in State.Events cannot also be in County.Events. I can accomplish this with fluent commands and overriding SaveChanges(Async). But why make us jump through hoops when it could be a simple fluent declaration? thanks - dave

Two suggestions for Entity Frameworks

David Thielen 2,796

I have no idea where to post suggestions so doing so here.

I have a record with a nullable FK. EF threw an exception building the database because that FK could lead to a cyclical cascade on deletes. The issue was not with deleting the record, it was with deleting the record the FK pointed to.
The thing is, deleting that pointed to record is, by definition in the design of my code, a bug. So what is needed is the ability to specify that deleting a record pointed to by that FK is not allowed. And if that is attempted, an exception should be thrown at run time. But with this restriction, then the database can be built.
I have a model (Event) that numerous models (State, County, etc.) have a collection of. EF won't build the database because State also has a collection of County and so it's worried deleting State will delete its Events, its Counties, and that Counties Events - which might be the same Event.
What's needed here is a way of telling EF that a given Event will be in exactly 1 collection. An evetn in State.Events cannot also be in County.Events. I can accomplish this with fluent commands and overriding SaveChanges(Async). But why make us jump through hoops when it could be a simple fluent declaration? thanks - dave

Jack J Jun 24,496 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2023-04-20T07:53:10.3466667+00:00

@David Thielen, Welcome to Microsoft Q&A,

The thing is, deleting that pointed to record is, by definition in the design of my code, a bug. So what is needed is the ability to specify that deleting a record pointed to by that FK is not allowed. And if that is attempted, an exception should be thrown at run time. But with this restriction, then the database can be built.

For your first question, do you mean that you want to throw a exception to tell the user that he could not delete the child object when you use the cascading deletes?

I have a model (Event) that numerous models (State, County, etc.) have a collection of. EF won't build the database because State also has a collection of County and so it's worried deleting State will delete its Events, its Counties, and that Counties Events - which might be the same Event.

For your second question, do you mean that you want to turn of cascading deletes to avoid the users deleting the useful events?
David Thielen 2,796 Reputation points

2023-04-20T16:30:24.2633333+00:00

For the first one, yes throw an exception. For the second one, I want cascading deletes. My situation is they would never be cyclic so it's safe to cascade.
Jack J Jun 24,496 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2023-04-21T06:28:54.5166667+00:00

@David Thielen, thanks for the feedback, if you have the feature request about the two suggestions, I recommend that you could give your advice in GitHub.

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Two suggestions for Entity Frameworks