Using EF code first to generate tables with columns that have special SQL data types

Question

I was wondering if it is possible (either through the Fluent Api or data annotations) to have a property map to the database as bit, hierarchyid, sql_variant, sysname, table, or timestamp when generating the database via code first. Really the most important one for me is sysname, I'm just curious on the rest. Has any done this? Thanks

Answer 1

Reading from here I would say no. There is no CLR type equivalent to sysname SQL type.

I also try .HasColumnType("sysname") with no succes bu an exception on a missing namespace for non primitive type name. But as there is nothing in the CLR concerning sysname, I have no namespace to provide.

Form here you can read that sysname is nvarchar(128) not null.

hope this helps

Answer 2

I just sheepishly repeated the empiric approach as done 3 years ago here.

I got data types that can be put in a table by SELECT name FROM sys.systypes:

bigint
binary
bit
char
date
datetime
datetime2
datetimeoffset
decimal
float
geography
geometry
hierarchyid
image
int
money
nchar
ntext
numeric
nvarchar
real
smalldatetime
smallint
smallmoney
sql_variant
sysname
text
time
timestamp
tinyint
uniqueidentifier
varbinary
varchar
xml

(Note that sysname is in there but table isn't).

I reverse-engineered a table containing these types with entity framework power tools (beta 3, EF 6.0.0 alpha-3) and got this result:

public partial class AllType{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public Nullable<long> bigint { get; set; }
    public byte[] binary { get; set; }
    public Nullable<bool> bit { get; set; }
    public string @char { get; set; }
    public Nullable<System.DateTime> date { get; set; }
    public Nullable<System.DateTime> datetime { get; set; }
    public Nullable<System.DateTime> datetime2 { get; set; }
    public Nullable<System.DateTimeOffset> datetimeoffset { get; set; }
    public Nullable<decimal> @decimal { get; set; }
    public Nullable<double> @float { get; set; }
    public System.Data.Entity.Spatial.DbGeography geography { get; set; }
    public System.Data.Entity.Spatial.DbGeometry geometry { get; set; }
    public byte[] image { get; set; }
    public Nullable<int> @int { get; set; }
    public Nullable<decimal> money { get; set; }
    public string nchar { get; set; }
    public string ntext { get; set; }
    public Nullable<decimal> numeric { get; set; }
    public string nvarchar { get; set; }
    public Nullable<float> real { get; set; }
    public Nullable<System.DateTime> smalldatetime { get; set; }
    public Nullable<short> smallint { get; set; }
    public Nullable<decimal> smallmoney { get; set; }
    public string sysname { get; set; }
    public string text { get; set; }
    public Nullable<System.TimeSpan> time { get; set; }
    public byte[] timestamp { get; set; }
    public Nullable<byte> tinyint { get; set; }
    public Nullable<System.Guid> uniqueidentifier { get; set; }
    public byte[] varbinary { get; set; }
    public string varchar { get; set; }
    public string xml { get; set; }    }

You see that presently these types are not supported:

hierarchyid
sql_variant

And of course table, because it's not a column data type in the first place.

Well, this is the dumb approach supplementing tschmit007's smarter answer because, like you, I was just curious.