EF Code First: Denormalize Inherited Type

Question

I have the following entities:

Human

-Name

-Age

-Height

-Weight

SuperHuman : Human

-SuperPower

EF is creating the SuperHumans table with only the Power property and when queried joins to the Humans table. I want all the columns on the SuperHumans table.

Can EF 4.1 Code First be configured to do this?

Answer 1

Wouldn't making Human partial work?? If that doesn't work just look into Table-Per-Hierarchy vs Table-Per-Type vs Table-Per-Concrete-Type (TPH, TPT, TPC). You are currently using TPT and you want TPC.

Answer 2

One way to do this is to make the relationship a Has-a relationship instead of an Is-a relationship.

public class SuperHuman
{
    public Human TheHuman { get; set; }
    public string SuperPower { get; set; }
}

The resulting database table should have all the fields of Human and SuperHuman (as long as you don't have a separate Human table, in which case a separate Human table will be created, and a Foreign Key will be added to link the tables together.)

Its limited in utility, as it breaks inheritance. You may find a better solution.

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Edit: You could do something like this:

public class SuperHuman : Human
{
    public string Name 
    { 
        get { return base.Name; } 
        set { base.Name = value; } 
    }
}

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Note: This isn't tested, and may not be the best solution. I include it here merely as a possible solution.

Answer 3

I just needed to configure the SuperHuman to map inherited properties, like so:

    protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder)
    {
        modelBuilder.Entity<SuperHuman>().Map(m => m.MapInheritedProperties());
    {