SqlException (0x80131904): Invalid object name 'dbo.Categories'

Question

I am getting the exception above when I run an application. The application is using asp.net mvc 3 / C#. I made an mdf file and added it under App_Data folder in Visual Web

Answer 1

Since this was still top search hit on the exception in April of 2018 and it led me to a solution, let me tack this on for a specific situation...

Our application is based on ABP and ABP.Zero, and we already have a pattern that fit Marc's answer. While I bet explicit mapping in the OnModelCreating method (a la Dhananjay's answer) would have worked perfectly, it seemed like ABP's mapping was working perfectly up to this point and I didn't want to break the pattern.

My solution was to add a table attribute to the entity class, and this settled EF's confusion.

using System;
using Abp.Domain.Entities;
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.Schema;

namespace Discovery.History
{

    [Table("HistoryRecords")]
    public class HistoryRecord : Entity
    {
        public int ResearcherCount { get; set; }
        public DateTime DateSubmitted { get; set; }
        public string Comments { get; set; }
    }
}