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What is a source

A source defines a connection to a model and the meta data to retrieve from that model. Models themselves would contain a full specification, but the connection can filter out the appropriate meta data – or retrieve its entirety.

Templates then connect to the source and can iterate through model components exposed by that source.

 

Providers

Model providers are implementations of specific meta data sources (such as different database systems). Each provider would have its own particular quirks, but for database providers there are four components.

Connection

Basically the connection string to the database.

Tables/Views Meta Data

This is meta data for tables and views. There are two ways to retrieve it (under the radio button selection group “approach”) although some providers may restrict the user to only one of these:

1. Single result set.
   Using a SQL query the meta data is returned as a single data set in order of tables/views and corresponding columns with their information (type, size, precision, etc).
2. Table/column retrieval
   Tables are retrieved first, and the columns for each table are then retrieved individually. This supports any restrictions by providers that can’t or don’t have column meta data but do have table meta data.

Routines Meta Data

This is for stored procedures and functions. SQL queries are the only known way to retrieve them. The result set returned in a single data set in order of stored procedures/functions and corresponding parameters with their information(type, size, precision, etc). Any select routines returning a dataset will have the column meta data retrieved internally without user specification. The .NET framework has support for this.