[teiid-designer-dev] Teiid Designer Connections paradigm

Wanted to update you'all on where our current connection management will look like for 7.0 and some background as to why we got here, so please bare with me. General Info: 1) Designer is providing access to the Teiid Admin API methods necessary to deploy or manage the artifacts necessary to deploy a VDB and execute. These artifacts include: Data Source (connection factory xml fragment) and the VDB itself. The VDB must contain a vdb.xml configuration file containing the source model connection information including a “ translator-name ” and the “ connection-jndi-name ” (or data source name). 2) DTP provides Teiid Designer the framework for creating and managing “Data Source” objects, known as Connection Profiles. These Connection Profiles contain the basic URL & User-specific properties used to access database schema during Designer's JDBC Import process and provide the properties necessary for Teiid to create it's JDBC connection for data access during VDB execution. For 7.0, we'll have to provide Connection Profile contributions for SF, Text & LDAP in order to allow users to construct valid VDB's containing these model types. 3) Teiid Admin functionality is provided by the web-based JOPR/JON tool. This tool enables creation and management of the connection artifacts specific to your data sources, in particular, Connection Factories. Teiid Designer utilizes Teiid's Admin API to hand-off the pertinent Connection Profile information for each source, when necessary, to create the appropriate connection artifacts for the user. Replacing JdbcSource Info with Connection Profile Info To facilitate transportability of both models and VDB's, we're proposing injecting a more generic set of connection properties into a model via a coded “Annotation” object containing Connection Profile info. This allows Designer to persist/retrieve connection info for both jdbc and non-jdbc sources and it eliminates the need to manage “source – connection” bindings within the workspace (ala MMX & 6.0-6.3). This means the JDBC Source properties currently stored in imported Relational models, will be deprecated. Any legacy model (pre-7.0) that is loaded into new Designer workspace would be required to have it's connection profile set prior to Previewing. This provides a clean scenario for Relational models created via ANY manner. When user wishes to Preview or Execute, then the user will be required to either select existing, or create a new “Connection Profile" so we can sync up/populate the model with required connection info. So if user A creates a ZZZ.vdb and checks it into SVN, then user B checks out ZZZ.vdb into their workspace without checking out the models, then we can still extract the necessary info to create the necessary Connection Profile in their workspace. Basically this condenses the "Connection" management in Designer to always leverage DTP's existing connection profile framework. Barry