Setting up for Microsoft Entity Data Model projects

Download:pizza_edm.zip

Development System: I have used a PC running Microsoft Server 2003 (32-bit), and also an XP system.
  1. If you can afford it, first install SQL Server 2005 Development Edition or a complete SQL Server 2005 system on your development machine or have it available on a local server.  If you do this after step 2, you will find that the VS Studio 2008 installation has installed SQL Server 2005 Express for you, which doesn't have the SQL Profiler, yet blocks installation of a better version of SQL Server workstation tools because the Express version of these tools is newer. To get around this, you need to uninstall SQL Server 2005 Express and then install the better version of SQL Server 2005. However, you can get along with SQL Server Express if you can stand not seeing all the generated SQL of your application. You can see the query SQL via ToTraceString.
  2. Install Microsoft Visual Studio 2008.
  3. Install Visual Studio SP1 Beta (or SP1 itself once available).  This has the EDM support.
  4. Optionally install more tools, samples.
  5. If you are using SQL Server 2005 Express (having skipped step 1) can't find SQL Server Management Express Studio after this  (my experience), download and install it separately. With a better SQL Server, you should have SQL Server Management Studio.
  6. Enable the distributed transaction service (DTC) in the Services control panel on any system in use here. This is for EDM with transactions, the setup used for the pizza project. 
  7. Now you should have a working Visual Studio (VS) and SQL Server 2005.  Check them out.
To get the pizza project up and running as a console or web app project in VS:
  1. Using SQL Query Analyzer, execute the script pizzaDDL.sql to create the pizza database in SQL Server 2005 (Express or not) or SQL Server 2000.
  2. In VS, create a new C# ASP.NET web app or console project in a new directory.
  3. Right click the project icon in Solution Explorer, Add new item, add Entity Data Model, call it PizzaModel.edmx, generated from database tables in SQL Server Express (pizza database), saving as PizzaEntities in App.config.
  4. Copy the other source files (.cs for both, .aspx as well for web app)  into the project, and "Add item, existent item" for them. You don't need ConsoleProgram.cs in a web app, or any file with "asp" in the file name for a console project.
  5. Build the project. If necessary, if the web app build fails, right click the .aspx files in Solution Explorer and convert them to web forms.
  6. If it's a web app, execute from any selected web form, but most naturally the first one. VS has a built-in web server and browser.
  7. If it's a console project, execute from ConsoleProgram
If you only want to execute the project, and have IIS installed, you don't need the above development software:
1. Make sure it supports at least ADO.NET v 2.0, if not upgrade it (run inetmgr to find out)
2. Copy this project to c:\pizza, or someplace similarly not too deep in the file system, to avoid protection problems.
3. Use inetmgr > WebSites> Default WebSite> new virtual directory, alias pizza, path c:\pizza, to define a new virtual directory mapped to where this project resides.
4. Browse to http://localhost/pizza.

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