EF Core 11

EF Core scaffolds RenameTable when you change the table name, but DropTable plus CreateTable when you rename the entity class. Here is how to tell the two apart, the ToTable trick that makes a class rename free, and the column-rename bug that silently swaps your data.

Add a rowversion concurrency token in EF Core 11: the [Timestamp] and IsRowVersion setup, the SQL EF actually emits, catching DbUpdateConcurrencyException, store-wins vs client-wins vs merge, disconnected APIs with ETags, and the five traps that silently disable the whole thing.

Store C# enums as readable strings instead of ints in EF Core 11: HasConversion, bulk configuration for every enum, the nvarchar(max) trap, the ordering gotcha, and how to migrate an existing int column.

Add Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Design to the startup project that dotnet ef builds, not the project holding your DbContext, and pass -s in layered solutions.

EF Core throws PendingModelChangesWarning when your model no longer matches the last migration snapshot. Add the migration, or fix the false positive behind it.

A complete guide to deploying EF Core 11 schema changes with migration bundles: building efbundle in CI, the appsettings.json trap with named connection strings, self-contained bundles and the Alpine musl RID, migration locking since EF Core 9, rolling back with a target migration, and why per-migration transactions do not save you on MySQL.

On EF Core 11, default to complex types for value objects and drop to owned entities only when you need a separate table or a collection mapped to its own rows.

On EF Core 11, default to TPH for almost every hierarchy, reach for TPC only when you mostly query one leaf type and a benchmark proves it wins, and use TPT only when an external constraint forces you to.

TPH is EF Core's default inheritance strategy: one table, one discriminator column. Here is how to configure the discriminator, share columns, handle nullable derived properties, and the gotchas on EF Core 11.

Owned entities carry a hidden key and reference identity that fights value objects. Here is how to map a value object as a complex type in EF Core 11, when to switch, and the gotchas.