MetadataException Unable to load the specified metadata resource

Question

All of a sudden I keep getting a MetadataException on instantiating my generated ObjectContext class  The connection string in App Config looks correct - hasn t changed since last it worked - and I ve tried regenerating a new model  edmx-file  from the underlying database with no change   Anyone have any ideas   Further details  I haven t changed any properties  I haven t changed the name of any output assemblies  I haven t tried to embed the EDMX in the assembly  I ve merely waited 10 hours from leaving work until I got back  And then it wasn t working anymore   I ve tried recreating the EDMX  I ve tried recreating the project  I ve even tried recreating the database  from scratch  No luck  whatsoever

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For my case  it is solved by changing the properties of edmx file    Open the edmx file  Right click on any place of the EDMX designer choose properties  update Property called  Metadata Artifact Processing  to  Embed in Output Assembly    this solved the problem for me  The problem is  when the container try to find the meta data  it cant find it  so simply make it in the same assembly  this solution will not work if you have your edmx files in another assembly

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Exception is because compiler pointing to non existing Metadata so just Copy app config  connectionstring to Web config ConnectionString

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You can get this exception when the Edmx is in one project and you are using it from another     The reason is Res      is a uri which points to resources in the CURRENT assembly   If the Edm is defined in a different assembly from the code which is using it  res      is not going to work because the resource cannot be found     Instead of specifying          you need to provide the full name of the assembly instead  including public key token    Eg   res   YourDataAssembly  Version 1 0 0 0  Culture neutral  PublicKeyToken abcdefabcedf YourEdmxFileName csdl res         A better way to construct connection strings is with EntityConnectionStringBuilder   public static string GetSqlCeConnectionString string fileName        var csBuilder   new EntityConnectionStringBuilder         csBuilder Provider    System Data SqlServerCe 3 5       csBuilder ProviderConnectionString   string Format  Data Source  0     fileName        csBuilder Metadata   string Format  res    0  YourEdmxFileName csdl res    0  YourEdmxFileName ssdl res    0  YourEdmxFileName msl            typeof YourObjectContextType  Assembly FullName        return csBuilder ToString       public static string GetSqlConnectionString string serverName  string databaseName        SqlConnectionStringBuilder providerCs   new SqlConnectionStringBuilder         providerCs DataSource   serverName      providerCs InitialCatalog   databaseName      providerCs IntegratedSecurity   true       var csBuilder   new EntityConnectionStringBuilder         csBuilder Provider    System Data SqlClient       csBuilder ProviderConnectionString   providerCs ToString         csBuilder Metadata   string Format  res    0  YourEdmxFileName csdl res    0  YourEdmxFileName ssdl res    0  YourEdmxFileName msl           typeof YourObjectContextType  Assembly FullName        return csBuilder ToString        If you still encounter the exception  open the assembly in reflector and check the filenames for your  csdl   ssdl and  msl files   When the resources have different names to the ones specified in the metadata value  it   s not going to work

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I ve just spent a happy 30 minutes with this  I d renamed the entities object  renamed the entry in the config file  but there s more      you have to change the reference to the csdl as well  very easy to miss - if you re renaming  make sure you get everything

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And a quick way to check the model name without Reflector     look for the directory        obj  config output  edmxResourcesToEmbed   and check that the  csdl   msl  and  ssdl resource files are there  If they are in a sub-directory  the name of the sub-directory must be prepended to the model name   For example  my three resource files are in a sub-directory Data  so my connection string had to be     metadata res     Data MyModel csdl res     Data MyModel ssdl res     Data MyModel msl     versus metadata res     MyModel csdl res     MyModel ssdl res     MyModel msl

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If you are using the edmx from a different project  then in the connection string  change     metadata res     Data DataModel csdl      to     metadata res     DataModel csdl

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I got this error when my emdx file was deleted by a prebuild command  quite simply  Took me a while before realizing it was that simple

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In my case this was because I was building the connection string using a EntityConnectionStringBuilder  Make sure your  Metadata property is using the Model name  including the namespace

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Just type path as follows instead of  Path To The    res     Path To The  YourEdmxFileName csdl res     Path To The  YourEdmxFileName ssdl res      Path To The  YourEdmxFileName msl

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After hours of googling and trying to solve none of the solutions suggested worked  I have listed several solution here  I have also noted the one that worked for me   I was using EF version 6 1 1  and SQL server 2014 - but an older DB    Rebuilding the project and try again   Close and open VS - I don t know how this works make sure if you have placed the  EDMX file inside a Directory  make sure you include the Directories in your ConnectionString  for example mine is inside DAL folder  SO it looks like this  connectionString  metadata res     DAL nameModel csdl res     DAL nameModel ssdl res     DAL nameModel msl  these are files  to see them you can toggle Show All Files in solution explorer  under   obj    directory       and many more which I had tried  like  reverting the EntityFramework version to a later version not sure about it      what worked for me   from this article here  it helped me solve my problem  I just changed my ProviderManifestToken  2012  to ProviderManifestToken  2008  in the EDMX file  To do this   Solution Explorer   Right click over file  edmx Open with   Editor XML Change ProviderManifestToken  XXXX  with 2008   I hope that helps

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The ultimate solution  even after recreating the database on two other machines  as well as the EDMX and other sundries  was to not use the first edition of Entity Framework  Looking forward to evaluating it again in  NET 4 0   After running into the same problem again and searching all over for an answer  I finally found someone who d had the same problem  It appears that the connection string wasn t correctly generated by Visual Studio s wizard  and the link to the metadata resources was missing an important path   v1 0 BUG   Unable to load the specified metadata resource  Scripts    Models  Update 2013-01-16  Having transitioned to almost exclusively using EF Code First practices  even with existing databases  this problem is no longer an issue  For me  that was a viable solution to reducing the clutter from auto-generated code and configuration and increasing my own control over the product

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My issue and solution  the symptoms were the same  Unable to load the specified metadata resource  but the root cause was different   I had 2 projects in solution one was the EntityModel and the other the solution   I actually deleted and recreated the EDMX file in the EntityModel     The solution was that I had to go back to the Web Application project and add this line into the config file  The new model had changed a few items which had to be duplicated in the  other  project s Web Config file   The old configuration was no longer good         lt add name  MyEntities       connectionString  metadata res     Model1 csdl res     Model1 ssdl res     Model1 msl                      provider System Data SqlClient                      provider connection string  amp quot                      data source Q DEV15 initial catalog whatever                      user id myuserid password mypassword                      multipleactiveresultsets True                      application name EntityFramework amp quot        providerName  System Data EntityClient    gt

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Sometimes the assembly that contains the model is not loaded        TestMethod      public void TestOpenWithConfigurationAfterExplicit                 String dummy   typeof MallApp  Assembly FullName              force the assembly loaded          using  DbContext ctx   new DbContext  name MyContainer                               The type MallApp lives in the same assembly as the entity model  Without the explicit loading  an System Data MetadataException will be thrown

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In my case none of the answers listed worked and so I m posting this   For my case  building on Visual studio and running it with IIS express worked fine  But when I was deploying using Nant scripts as a stand-alone website was giving errors  I tried all the suggestions above and then realized the DLL that was generated by the nant script was much smaller than the one generated by VS  And then I realized that Nant was unable to find the  csdl   msl and  ssdl files  So then there are really two ways to solve this issue  one is to copy the needed files after visual studio generates them and include these files in the build deployment  And then in Web config  specify path as    metadata   bin MyDbContext csdl   bin MyDbContext ssdl   bin MyDbContext msl provider System Data SqlClient         This is assuming you have manually copied the files into bin directory of the website which you are running  If it s in a different directory  then modify path accordingly  Second method is to execute EdmGen exe in Nant script and generate the files and then include them as resources like done in the example below  https   github com qwer budget blob master nant build

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I had the same problem with a solution which contained projects in a Solution Folder  when they were moved to the Solution Root  in order to overcome a suspected bug with the Mvc3AppConverter due to project locations    Although the solution compiled after all  project references were re-added as needed  the error was thrown when the website was fired up   The EDMX is in one of the projects which was moved  the  Data  project   but of course the lack of a reference to the Data project didn t cause a compile error  just a run-time error   Simply adding the missing reference to the primary project resolved this problem  no need to edit the connection at all   I hope this helps someone else

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As for me  I had separated Data Access Layer and User Interface layer  So I have entity connection string for each layer   Before I modify these two separated connection strings to be the same  I still found that below error   Unable to load the specified metadata resource   So I make to be the same connection strings for those two layers  DAL   UI   It work perfect   My solution is to make all connection string to be the same no matter where they already presented

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I spent a whole day on this error  if you are working with n-tear architecture   or you tried to separate Models generated by EDMX form DataAccessLayer to DomainModelLayer   maybe you will get this error    First troubleshooting step is to make sure the Connection string in webconfig  UILayer and appconfig  DataAccessLayer  are the same  Second which is Very important the connection string   connectionString  metadata res     Model csdl res     Model ssdl res     Model msl provid        which is the problem    from where on earth I got Modelor whatever  csdl in my connection string where are they  here I our solution look at the picture     hope the help you

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Had same issue because I renamed an assembly   I had to also rename it in AssemblyTitle and AssemblyProduct attributes in project Properties AssemblyInfo cs  and also deleting and re adding the reference to the edmx file   Then it worked just fine

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I had same issue on 27 Sep 2019   My API is in Dot net core Targeting to  net framework  edmx is in a different class library which is in  net framework only   I observed that when I try to call that edmx from API    for some reason I got that error   What I did is  go to the obj folder of API and delete everything  then clean the API project and try again and that worked for me

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I have written this helper class to create instances of ObjectContext objects when they are defined in a different project than the project using it  I parse the connection string in the config file and replace     by the full assembly name   It is not perfect because it uses reflection to build the object  but it is the most generic way of doing it that I could find   Hope it helps someone   public static class EntityHelper lt T gt  where T   ObjectContext       public static T CreateInstance                    get the connection string from config file         string connectionString   ConfigurationManager ConnectionStrings typeof T  Name  ConnectionString              parse the connection string         var csBuilder   new EntityConnectionStringBuilder connectionString               replace   by the full name of the containing assembly         csBuilder Metadata   csBuilder Metadata Replace               res                    string Format  res    0     typeof T  Assembly FullName                return the object         return Activator CreateInstance typeof T   csBuilder ToString    as T

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Using the info from this blogpost   Like others have said  res    is a pointer to your resources  To check and make sure your resource names are correct you can use a decompiler like DotPeek by JetBrains to open up your  dll file and see your Resources files   Or you could open up the watch window while you re debugging and paste in this code to get an array of the resource names in the currently executing assembly   System Reflection Assembly GetExecutingAssembly   GetManifestResourceNames     That being said  the format of your metadata paths should be something like    my-assembly-name   possibly-a-namespace   class-name   csdl or ssdl or msl

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I was able to resolve this in Visual Studio 2010  VB net  ASP NET  4 0   During the entity model wizard  you will be able to see the entity connection string  From there you can copy and paste into your connection string   The only thing I was missing was the  App Code   in the connections string   entityBuilder Metadata    res     App Code Model csdl res     App Code Model ssdl res     App Code Model msl

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I had the same problem  I looked into my complied dll with reflector and have seen that the name of the resource was not right  I renamed and it looks fine now

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When I got the metadata issue sorted out  I had a follow-on problem in the form of an invokation exception unable to find a connection string for XXXEntities in app config  where my goal was no dependency on app config   Through sheer luck I found that referencing System Data in my unit test project cleared this final hurdle  So to summarise   Use nuget to install Entity Framework to your unit test project  Ensure System Data Entity and System Data are referenced  Sort your connection string as described very well here  Pass the connection string to your partial class constructor   I now have my metadata in a class library which can update from a reference db  and I can point my application and unit tests to any db on any server at runtime   Addendum  When I moved my edmx to a folder  I got the error again  After a bit of research  I found that you want your metadata string to look like  metadata res   EPM DAL Models EPM csdl  where EPM DAL is the name of the assembly and EPM edmx is in the models folder

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I had this problem yesterday and was looking at my code in debug and the output from SQL Profiler   What I couldn t understand  before I read and understood this post  was why EntityFramework was throwing this error as it was calling the DB  I was looking through hundreds of lines in SQL Profiler trying to work out what was wrong with the database model  I couldn t find anything like the call I was expecting  and to be honest I wasn t certain what I was looking for   If you are in this position  check the connection string  My guess is that before EntityFramework creates its SQL it will check the model  specified in the metadata part of the connection string  In my case it was wrong  EntityFramework wasn t even making it as far as the DB    Make sure the names are correct  Once I got that sorted out  I was then seeing calls in SQL Profiler where the ApplicationName was  EntityFramework  with SQL calling the expected tables

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I simply hadn t referenced my class library that contained the EDMX file

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With having same problem I re-created edmx from Database  Solves my problem

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Similar problem for me  My class name was different to my file name  The connectionstring generated had the class name and not the file name in  Solution for me was just to rename my file to match the class name

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I was having problems with this same error message   My issue was resolved by closing and re-opening Visual Studio 2010

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This little change help with this problem   I have Solution with 3 project   connectionString  metadata res     Model Project csdl res     Model Project ssdl res     Model Project msl    change to  connectionString  metadata res

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Another cause for this exception is when you include a related table in an ObjectQuery  but type in the wrong navigation property name   Example   var query    from x in myDbObjectContext Table1 Include  FKTableSpelledWrong   select x

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A poor app config or web config file can do this   I had copied the app config connection string to my web config in my UI and ended up entering    lt connectionStrings gt       lt connectionStrings gt             lt add name  name  connectionString  normalDetails   gt       lt  connectionStrings gt   lt  connectionStrings gt

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I also had the same problem and solution as per Rick  except that I was importing an existing  edmx to a new project  and while the base namespace didn t matter it was imported into a different subdirectory so I also had to update the connection string inside Web Config  in three places  to include the different subdirectory naming

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I also had this problem and it was because the connectionstring in my web config was slightly different than the one in the app config of the assembly where my EDMX is located  No idea why it changed  but here are the two different versions   App config    lt add name  SCMSEntities  connectionString  metadata res     Model SMCSModel csdl res     Model SMCSModel ssdl res     Model SMCSModel msl provider System Data SqlClient provider connection string  amp quot data source SANDIEGO sql2008 initial catalog SCMS integrated security True multipleactiveresultsets True application name EntityFramework amp quot   providerName  System Data EntityClient    gt    Web config    lt add name  SCMSEntities  connectionString  metadata res     Model SCMSModel csdl res     Model SCMSModel ssdl res     Model SCMSModel msl provider System Data SqlClient provider connection string  amp quot data source SANDIEGO sql2008 initial catalog SCMS integrated security True MultipleActiveResultSets True App EntityFramework amp quot   providerName  System Data EntityClient    gt    What fixed it was simply copying the app config string  notice the small difference at the end - instead of  App EntityFramework  it wanted  application name EntityFramework   into the web config and problem was solved

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This means that the application is unable to load the EDMX  There are several things which can cause this    You might have changed the MetadataArtifactProcessing property of the model to Copy to Output Directory  The connection string could be wrong  I know you say you haven t changed it  but if you have changed other things  say  the name of an assembly   it could still be wrong  You might be using a post-compile task to embed the EDMX in the assembly  which is no longer working for some reason    In short  there is not really enough detail in your question to give an accurate answer  but hopefully these ideas should get you on the right track   Update  I ve written a blog post with more complete steps for troubleshooting

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This happens to me when I do not clean solution before build new  edmx designer  So just don   t forget to clean solution before you build new  edmx designer  This helps me to skip lot more issues with this one  Bellow the navigation details provided incase you are new in visual studio      Click- Build- Clean Solution      Then Click- Build- Rebuild Solution   Hope this helps  Thanks everyone

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My theory is that if you have more than one edmx file with same name  Model1 for example   it will give that exception  I ve got same problem when I decided to name all my edmx files  sitting in different projects  as Model1 because I thought they should be independent

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In my case  this issue was related to renaming my model s edmx file    correcting the app config connection string for the csdl ssdl msl files fixed my issue   If you re using the EF 4 0 designer to generate your csdl ssdl msl  these 3  files  will actually be stored within the model s main edmx file  In this case  the post by Waqas is pretty much on the mark  It s important to understand that  Model Name  in his example will need to be changed to whatever the current name of your model s  edmx file  without the  edmx      Also  if your edmx file is not at the root level of your project  you need to preface Model Name with the relative path  e g   res     MyModel WidgetModel csdl res     MyModel WidgetModel ssdl res     MyModel WidgetModel msl   would specify the csdl ssdl msl xml is stored in the model file  WidgetModel edmx  which is stored in a folder named  MyModel

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I had a similar error   I had recreated the project  long story   and pulled everything over from the old project   I hadn t realized that my model had been in a directory called  Model  before  and was now in a directory called  Models    Once I changed the connection in my Web Config from this    lt add name  RecipeManagerEntities  connectionString  metadata res     Model Recipe csdl    to this    lt add name  RecipeManagerEntities  connectionString  metadata res     Models Recipe csdl   Everything worked  changed Model to Models    Note that I had to change this three places in this string

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Sometimes i see this error in my project  I solve that by  1 - Right click on EDMX file  2 - Select Run Custom Tool option  3 - Rebuild project

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I got this problem after moving a large solution from one folder in Source Control Explorer to another   We don t check the package folder into Team Foundation and so I think VS downloaded packages automatically   This upgraded my EF form v6 1 2 to v6 1 3   The problem went away when I downgraded to the original v6 1 2

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For all of you SelftrackingEntities Users    if you have followed the Microsoft Walk-through and separated the Object context class into  the wcf service project  by linking to the context  tt  so this answer is for you     part of the shown answers in this post that includes code like           string Format  res    0  YourEdmxFileName csdl res    0  YourEdmxFileName ssdl res    0  YourEdmxFileName msl            typeof YourObjectContextType  Assembly FullName      WILL NOT WORK FOR YOU     the reason is that YourObjectContextType Assembly now resides in a different Assembley  inside the wcf project assembly      So you should replace YourObjectContextType Assembly FullName  with --   ClassTypeThatResidesInEdmProject Assembly FullName    have fun

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This happened to me when I accidentally switched the Build Action of the edmx file  appears under Properties in the IDE  from  EntityDeploy  to  None   EntityDeploy is what populates the metadata for you  see http   msdn microsoft com en-us library cc982037 aspx

[c#] MetadataException: Unable to load the specified metadata resource

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