Entity Framework Core Cookbook - Second Edition

Retrieving entity metadata

When you create an Entity Framework context, you map a domain model to a data store. Specifically, in the case of relational databases, you assign the following:

• Classes to tables
• Properties to columns
• References to foreign keys

Of course, in normal usage, you normally don't need to worry about these mappings; you just query the POCO domain model and that's it. But if you need to write SQL for more advanced queries, you are left with two options:

• You know exactly the database names of all the tables and columns (keep in mind that the class Person can be mapped to, say, PERSON, PEOPLE, PERSON_DETAIL, PERSON_DETAILS, and so on)
• You obtain this information dynamically at runtime

If you want to be safe, you will stick to the second ...