Caution
This documentation is for EF Core. For EF6.x and earlier release see http://msdn.com/data/ef.
SQLite Limitations¶
When using the SQLite provider, there are a number of limitations you should be aware of. Most of these are a result of limitations in the underlying SQLite database engine and are not specific to EF.
Modeling Limitations¶
The common relational library (shared by Entity Framework relational database providers) defines APIs for modelling concepts that are common to most relational database engines. A number of these concepts are not supported by the SQLite provider.
- Schemas
- Sequences
Migrations Limitations¶
The SQLite database engine does not support a number of schema operations that are supported by the majority of other relational databases. If you attempt to apply one of the unsupported operations to a SQLite database then a NotSupportedException will be thrown.
| Operation | Supported? |
|---|---|
| AddColumn | ✔ |
| AddForeignKey | ✗ |
| AddPrimaryKey | ✗ |
| AddUniqueConstraint | ✗ |
| AlterColumn | ✗ |
| AlterSequence | ✗ |
| CreateIndex | ✔ |
| CreateSchema | ✗ |
| CreateSequence | ✗ |
| CreateTable | ✔ |
| DropColumn | ✗ |
| DropForiegnKey | ✗ |
| DropIndex | ✔ |
| DropPrimaryKey | ✗ |
| DropSchema | ✗ |
| DropSequence | ✗ |
| DropTable | ✔ |
| DropUniqueConstraint | ✗ |
| RenameColumn | ✗ |
| RenameIndex | ✗ |
| RenameSequence | ✗ |
| RenameTable | ✔ |
| RestartSequence | ✗ |
Tip
You can workaround some of these limitations by manually writing code in your migrations to perform a table rebuild. A table rebuild involves renaming the existing table, creating a new table, copying data to the new table, and dropping the old table. You will need to use the Sql(string) method to perform some of these steps.
See Making Other Kinds Of Table Schema Changes in the SQLite documentation for more details.
In the future, EF may support some of these operations by using the table rebuild approach under the covers. You can track this feature on our GitHub project.