Entity Framework conflict with same table name from different databases

Question

I am using Entity Framework 4 with MVC 3 in Visual Studio 2012 (C#).

I am using database first; there are two separate databases each with its own namespace and with two separate edmx files. Each database has a table with the same name and fields (but different content). When I added the second table I started to get compile errors.

Ambiguity between 'Interface.CodeFormStatus.FormStatusCodeID' 
and 'Interface.CodeFormStatus.FormStatusCodeID' 

There seem to be some complex workarounds or I could rename one of the tables. Is there not a straightforward solution as this must be a fairly common issue.

Answer 1

I ran into a situation where I had two databases (one an older version of the other) and I needed to integrate both into a single project. Naturally, almost every name conflicted.

I created two separated edmx files for each database, and put each in its own namespace for clarity. I then edited each entity name to reflect which database it was coming from - (e.g. "Activities", which was in both, became "v13Activities" and "v14Activities").

For operations which were to be mirrored between both databases, I wrote a wrapper that included both contexts. This made my code was much less repetitive, and it had less synchronization issues.

Hope this approach helps someone else - it seems like this is an obscure question, and this answer was one of the top results on Google!

Update: In EF 6.1+, there is another solution. You can have "conflicting" names, and separate them with simple namespacing when using the "Code First From Database" option. I would advocate for this solution going forward, as the old XML .edmx style is going to be phased out starting in EF Core.