title: Passing an enum value as a stored procedure (data function) parameter in LINQ to SQL
body: <p>As mentioned in <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4939/linq-to-sql-strings-to-enums">this question</a>, "LINQ to SQL allows table mappings to automatically convert back and forth to Enums by specifying the type for the column - this works for strings or integers."  However, I am having trouble with this when using stored procedures (instead of auto-generated SQL) to create and update entities.</p>
  
  <p>In my database I have a table Users with a column Role of type int.  I also have a stored procedure CreateUser which accepts a parameter @role of type int.  I want user roles to be represented by an enum Role in my C# code.  I can change the type of the Role property on the autogenerated User class from int to Role, but then the project refuses to compile because the type of the Role property doesn't match the type of the data function role parameter (corresponding to the @role parameter in my stored procedure).  The data function parameter types are autogenerated by LINQ to SQL and I can't find any way to change them.</p>
  
  <p>I'm considering leaving the Role property as an int, renaming it to something like RoleValue, making it private, and adding another public property of type Role which performs the int-enum conversion.  But it seems like there ought to be a better way.</p>