How to explicitly name the database when using Entity Framework Migrations 4.3

Question

I\'ve recently started using Entity Framework migrations and noticed that the database name is not pulling through for me when I run the Update-Database command

Answer 1

I tried with Latest EF5 from Nuget.

However Update-Database does not read the App.config from the project that contain the migrations (just like the answer 1 year ago) but it will only read *.config from start up project. It is great but I discover how Add-Migration and Update-Database find a suitable connection string here:

1. It trying to get "DefaultConnection" connection string first
2. Then it is trying to get the connection string name based on context class name. E.g. I have the MyContext class derived from DbContext so I can use the "MyContext" connection string name. Useful when I have multiple db connections.
3. If both the above connection string names are not found, it will fail and show no "DefaultConnection" connection string unless you supply the -ConnectionStringName parameter. See get-help Update-Database to view the help page in the Package Manager Console.

There is no retry or fallback attempt, so if the "DefaultConnection" contains a wrong connection string, it will simply show an error.

If both DefaultConnection and context name exist in the connection strings, DefaultConnection will take precedence.

I would prefer #2 become the first try because the name is more specific but the above steps is what EF5 Migrations do when trying to connect to the db.