Ability to specify database collation

There is no way to do this at the moment. Database is created with default settings. It is not an issue on most cases, but there is a plenty of specific ones. For example, I have different collation on production server db, then on development machine.

After some research I’ve come up with workaround. Pretty ugly so far, but at least working

In Migrations\00000000000000_CreateIdentitySchema.cs add

protected override void Up(MigrationBuilder migrationBuilder)
{
    migrationBuilder.Sql($"DECLARE @dbname sysname = db_name(); " +
    "EXEC('ALTER DATABASE [' + @dbname + '] SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE');" +
    "EXEC('ALTER DATABASE [' + @dbname + '] COLLATE Cyrillic_General_CI_AS');" +
    "EXEC('ALTER DATABASE [' + @dbname + '] SET MULTI_USER') ", suppressTransaction: true);
    ...
}

It is ok. But the connection is reset after execution of this first migration so I have to run in separately. I’ve come up with the following script (resetdb.cmd):

dotnet ef database update 00000000000000_CreateIdentitySchema
dotnet ef database update

So, there should be a proper way to do such things.

See also #6565

[cmanoliu]

Hello everyone, for the moment, my solution is to derive from the SqlServerMigrationsSqlGenerator and override Generate(SqlServerCreateDatabaseOperation, IModel, MigrationCommandListBuilder)

    internal class CustomSqlServerMigrationsSqlGenerator : SqlServerMigrationsSqlGenerator
    {
        internal const string DatabaseCollationName = "SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI";

        public CustomSqlServerMigrationsSqlGenerator(
            MigrationsSqlGeneratorDependencies dependencies,
            IMigrationsAnnotationProvider migrationsAnnotations)
        : base(dependencies, migrationsAnnotations)
        {
        }

        protected override void Generate(
            SqlServerCreateDatabaseOperation operation,
            IModel model,
            MigrationCommandListBuilder builder)
        {
            base.Generate(operation, model, builder);

            if (DatabaseCollationName != null)
            {
                builder
                    .Append("ALTER DATABASE ")
                    .Append(Dependencies.SqlGenerationHelper.DelimitIdentifier(operation.Name))
                    .Append(" COLLATE ")
                    .Append(DatabaseCollationName)
                    .AppendLine(Dependencies.SqlGenerationHelper.StatementTerminator)
                    .EndCommand(suppressTransaction: true);
            }
        }
    }

    protected override void OnConfiguring(DbContextOptionsBuilder optionsBuilder)
    {
        base.OnConfiguring(optionsBuilder);
        optionsBuilder.ReplaceService<IMigrationsSqlGenerator, CustomSqlServerMigrationsSqlGenerator>();
    }

then used it in the DbContext by replacing the IMigrationsSqlGenerator service

public class MyDbContext : DbContext
{
    //...

    protected override void OnConfiguring(DbContextOptionsBuilder optionsBuilder)
    {
        base.OnConfiguring(optionsBuilder);
        optionsBuilder.ReplaceService<IMigrationsSqlGenerator, CustomSqlServerMigrationsSqlGenerator>();
    }

    //...
}

[mwzndev]

Well, I created an extension using some examples I found and I’ve come up with this.

    public static class MigrationBuilderExtensions
    {
        public static void SetDatabaseCollationToInsensitive(this MigrationBuilder builder)
        {
            builder.Sql("DECLARE @dbname sysname = db_name(); " +
                        "EXEC('ALTER DATABASE [' + @dbname + '] COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI');", true);
        }
    }

And after creating your first migration just add the information on the top.

protected override void Up(MigrationBuilder migrationBuilder)
{
    migrationBuilder.SetDatabaseCollationToInsensitive();
}

It’s working by just using Update-Database, works for me for now.