Database Migrations with Entity Framework

Performing Database Migrations using .NET Core, SQL Server, and Entity Framework

Contents

Creating Migrations

When using Entity Framework database updates are defined by the application models available. In order to generate a migration script you would need to run the following command from your project directore

dotnet ef migrations add MIGRATION_NAME

This will create a new migration, you can also remove the last created migration with:

dotnet ef migrations remove

Database Updates

In order to update a database with the updated migration you can make use of the following command

dotnet ef database update

And in the case where a database cannot be accessed, you can generate the relevant SQL scripts using the following commands (documentation)

  1. Script all migrations
dotnet ef migrations script 0
  1. Script from initial state to Specific Migration
dotnet ef migrations script 0 MyTargetMigration
  1. Script from one migration to another
dotnet ef migrations script StartMigration EndMigration

When using the above scripts, the -i flag can be used to build a script that will work on a DB with any start-state, and the -o flag can be used to output to a file

dotnet ef migrations script 0 -i -o .\MyOutputFile.sql