I am working on an Entity Framework Code First project that has a fairly complex Data Model which deploys absolutely fine on SQL Server 2008.
However when creating an SQL Server CE database for some local End-To-End testing I get the following error message when EF creates the database:
System.Data.SqlServerCe.SqlCeException: The referential relationship will result in a cyclical reference that is not allowed. [ Constraint name = FK_Sites_Persons_PersonId ].
I have disabled the ManyToManyCascadeDeleteConvention in my DataContext model creation method, so that isn't the cause of the problem. The trouble I have is that the relationship in question looks fine in the SQL Server 2008 database- it appears to be a normal foreign key from what I can tell and I can't see anything flowing back in the other direction, although it is not impossible that there is a longer-path circular reference. I don't know why CE would fail and 2008 would succeed.
It turns out the problem was very simply solved- although I had disabled ManyToManyCascadeDeleteConvention I also needed to disable the OneToManyCascadeDeleteConvention to avoid the circular reference problem.