Order by enum description

Question

I am working on an ASP.NET MVC projet using EF code first, and I am facing a situation where I need to order by an enum description:

public partial class Ite         


        

Answer 1

Change my database column to a string (the enum description) instead of the enum itself (but sounds like a hack to me).

Opposite, for data-driven application it's better to describe Item property in the database reference table MyItemProperty(MyPropKey,MyPropDescription) and have MyPropKey column in your Items table.

It has a few benefits, e.g.

• allow to add new property values without need to change code;
• allow to write SQL reports having all information in the database without writing c#;
• performance optimisation can be done on SQL level just by requesting one page;
• no enum - less code to maintain.