Entity Framework 4 Code First - Prevent DB Drop/Create

Question

I've written an ASP.Net MVC 3 application using the Code First paradigm whereby when I make a change to the model the Entity Framework automatically attempts to re-create the underlying SQL Server Database via DROP and CREATE statements. The problem is the application is hosted on a 3rd party remote server which limits the number of databases I can have and does not seem to allow me to programmatically execute "CREATE DATABASE..." statements as I gather from this error message: CREATE DATABASE permission denied in database 'master'. Is there any way to stop the Entity Framework from dropping and attempting to re-create the whole database and instead make it simply drop the tables and re-create them? After creating the database manually and running the application I also get the following error I guess as the Entity Framework tries to modify the database: Model compatibility cannot be checked because the database does not contain model metadata. Ensure that IncludeMetadataConvention ha…

Accepted Answer

UPDATE: Found this gem through google, it sounds like its exactly what you need: http://nuget.org/Tags/IDatabaseInitializer

You can use a different database initializer. Lets say your context is called `SampleContext` then your constructor would look like this:

```
    public SampleContext() 
    {
        System.Data.Entity.Database.SetInitializer(new CreateDatabaseIfNotExists<SampleContext>()); 
    }
```

Note that the above is the default initializer. You will probably need to create your own custom initializer by implementing `IDatabaseInitializer`. Theres some good info here: http://sankarsan.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/entity-framework-ctp-4-0-database-initialization/

Entity Framework 4 Code First - Prevent DB Drop/Create

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