DBML inheritance: is there an easier way?

See more:

C#

SQL

entity-framework

Hey y'all,

Here's what I have:
So I have a highly normalized database. There is a table called BaseTypes which stores a very short list of "text","numeric","Date" & "bitwise". These are used to categorize .Net System types so we can apply general operations.

I have another table called BaseSelectorOperation which includes all of the selector operations you can perform on any base type, such as: "equals", "Greater Than", "Contains" etc.

I have a third link table that matches the BaseTypes with the BaseSelectorOperations. This gives us the link between "number" and "equals", "greater than", "less than" and their negations, and also a link between "text" and "equals", "contains", "starts with", etc.

---

Here's what I want:
SelectorTypes always have a BaseSelectorType (BaseTypes is really only another link table - sort of) So I thought I might be able to treat the BaseSelectorType / SelectorTypes as a single entity using the LinqToSql Association Inheritance? I just can't get it to work.

I know I could use a view, but I wanted to explore the feature because I have no understanding of what those association properties actually do.

Anyway: this is obviously non-urgent. Any advice would be helpful.

Thanks everyone ^_^

Have a good Easter break if it applies to you ^_^

Andy

What I have tried:

The setting I mentioned include Parent / Child inheritance properties. I have tried setting the parent to "virtual" and the child to "override" but I get the error:

Error	19	'DataAccess.EntityFramework.RateUploader.BaseSelectorOperation.SelectorOperations': no suitable method found to override	[Path]\Context.designer.cs	4089	48	DataAccess (Integration\DataAccess)

i also tried setting Child to new with parent as (none), but it doesn't seem to add anything to the child.