具有实体框架的WPF应用程序，app.config的正确设置

Question

I have a WPF program that uses Entity Framework (DB first approach). It works fine on my development laptop, but it crashes right at the beginning on the other computers and it's obviously because it some how can not connect to DB.

But about the very root of the problem, I read many things online, and although I don't have any certain answer but it seems like it has something to do with the connection string and app.config in general.

I use Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio on my development laptop and I've installed Microsoft SQL Server on the test unit.

The whole scenario is that I want to publish my application and any user can download and install it easily.

Here is my app.config :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
    <configSections>
        <section name="entityFramework" 
                 type="System.Data.Entity.Internal.ConfigFile.EntityFrameworkSection, EntityFramework, Version=6.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" 
                 requirePermission="false" />
    </configSections>
    <startup>
        <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.5.2" />
    </startup>
    <entityFramework>
        <defaultConnectionFactory 
              type="System.Data.Entity.Infrastructure.LocalDbConnectionFactory, EntityFramework">
            <parameters>
                <parameter value="mssqllocaldb" />
            </parameters>
        </defaultConnectionFactory>
        <providers>
             <provider invariantName="System.Data.SqlClient" 
                  type="System.Data.Entity.SqlServer.SqlProviderServices, EntityFramework.SqlServer" />
        </providers>
    </entityFramework>
    <connectionStrings>
        <add name="AssetManagementDBEntities"
             connectionString="metadata=res://*/Entity.AssetManagementDBModel.csdl|res://*/Entity.AssetManagementDBModel.ssdl|res://*/Entity.AssetManagementDBModel.msl;provider=System.Data.SqlClient;provider connection string=&quot;initial catalog=AssetManagementDB;integrated security=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=True;App=EntityFramework&quot;"
             providerName="System.Data.EntityClient"/>
    </connectionStrings>
</configuration>

Also I have to say, I couldn't find the .dll file that csdl , ssdl and msl must be in that!

The "Build Action" of the .edmx file is set to EntityDeploy

Answer 1

Finally I found the solution my self:

As explained here , it's not possible with DB-first approach, because it tries to initialize the model each time, and therefore it needs the DB to exist. So I just copied the classes and files that was created based on my DB and use them like code-first approach (the above link explained it very well). Note that you should remove the ConnectionString totally, because as it's explained in that link, the DB context takes care of that.

Note that you have to have SQLEXPRESS or LocalDB on your machine (if you have installed Visual Studio 2010 or 2012 then one of them is already installed).

Now when the program runs for the first time, it creates DB file in C:\\users\\[your_user_name] (there should be 2 files, the main DB file and the log file).

Leave a comment if you have questions about details