Skip to main content

LINQ, Reserved Names and .Net

Here's another good reason not to use reserved names.

I'm working on a LINQ project with a series of tables that manage user roles. As a result, I have table names like Systems, Roles and Users.
My trouble started when I would add the objects to the Designer, hit Save and then suddenly Visual Studio would say things like

"System.Data.Linq.Mapping.DatabaseAttribute is not defined"
or
"System.Nullable is not defined"


In short, stopping me dead in my tracks. Now that I look back, I don't know why I didn't see the reason earlier.

When using the Object Relational Designer, Visual Studio wants to be smart and changes any words that are plural to singular so they make more sense when dealing with data.


That way, your code looks like

oUser = New User
oUser.UserName = "John"

instead of
oUser = New Users
etc

This is really nice because it does make the code a little more legible except in this situation:

Plural (singular)
Users (User)
Roles (Role)
UserRoles (UserRole)
Systems (System)


See the gotcha? Visual Studio translated the "Systems" table into a "System" object which immediately negated all of the main namespaces in the project.

The renaming feature for the objects in LINQ-to-SQL is great - but be warned, when you start getting errors like this, take a look at your source tables.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Elevating Project Specifications with Three Insightful ChatGPT Prompts

For developers and testers, ChatGPT, the freely accessible tool from OpenAI, is game-changing. If you want to learn a new programming language, ask for samples or have it convert your existing code. This can be done in Visual Studio Code (using GitHub CoPilot) or directly in the ChatGPT app or web site.  If you’re a tester, ChatGPT can write a test spec or actual test code (if you use Jest or Cypress) based on existing code, copied and pasted into the input area. But ChatGPT can be of huge value for analysts (whether system or business) who need to validate their needs. There’s often a disconnect between developers and analysts. Analysts complain that developers don’t build what they asked for or ask too many questions. Developers complain that analysts haven’t thought of obvious things. In these situations, ChatGPT can be a great intermediary. At its worst, it forces you to think about and then discount obvious issues. At best, it clarifies the needs into documented requirements. ...

Blogs and RSS come to Microsoft.com

MS has just introduced their portal and it's pretty comprehensive. Nothing quite like learning that some people use AIM instead of MSN messenger, or that there really may be a need for supporting 4 monitors ( Cyrus Complains ) However, it's really a great sign that MS is serious about supporting the blogging community which seems to have um, exploded in size in the past year. Blogs and RSS come to Microsoft.com

5 Great Reasons to attend Virtual FoxFest

What's coming up? Virtual FoxFest is coming up soon (sessions start October 14th). Like last year, the conference is entirely virtual yet includes great breakdown rooms and sessions to add that nice one-on-one feel that you get in person. It's also staggered so you can choose which days you want to attend - October 14th, 20th and 26th. This is great if you can't break away for a consecutive three days. But really, I've gone through the sessions and I see five great sessions that I'm eager to check out. 1. A Decade of Thor (Rick Schummer) Thor has been an extension for Visual FoxPro that many developers swear by, yet many don't know even exists. Visual FoxPro's built-in extensions are great but Jim Nelson's Thor supercharges your IDE. I can't believe it's been ten years - so Rick's session should be able to not just whet your appetite but give you all the reasons you should be using it. 2. VFP C++ compiler.  Last year, we saw DotNetX as well ...