[teiid-designer-dev] other model types

[John Verhaeg]

On Mar 25, 2010, at 3:33 PM, Steven Hawkins wrote:

> We need to separate a couple of things out here.
> 
> My current understanding is that the vdb.xml file is becoming a replacement for both the ConfigurationInfo.def file and MetaMatrix-VdbManifestModel.xmi.  The old ConfigurationInfo file did not contain any model type information - that was in the VdbManifestModel.  The proposed schema for vdb.xml does contain model type - but only allows PHYSICAL, VIRTUAL, and FUNCTION.
> 
> Runtime uses this information in the following ways:
> 1. model type - available of our managed ModelMetadata, which
>   a. drives UI - such as show physical models in a display relating to connector bindings.
>   b. (Teiid 7.0 new) allows us to determine function models so that they can be loaded into the query metadata.
> 2. the model entry in the old ConfigurationInfo.def and in the new vdb.xml contains visibility information which we use to
>   a. hide virtual or physical metadata from users.
>   b. determine whether the actual model resource is retrievable through system procedures.  This is legacy behavior.  It does not seem like a very good idea to even allow this in general.  The only "models" that a client is really interested in retrieving are XSDs and that may no longer be needed given Ted's update of web service.
> 
> There are additional properties that we look at, but are specific to PHYSICAL models (dynamic vdb importer settings, multisource enablement, etc.).
> 
> So to re-rephase.  Designer previously used the MetaMatrix-VdbManifestModel.xmi to track models of types more than just PHYSICAL, VIRTUAL, and FUNCTION.  Does it still need/want to do that in the vdb.xml? 


Thanks for the clarification; that helps a lot.  I can't think of any reason to keep these other than some purely UI reason like wanting to show model-type-specific icons in a VDB editor or view.

Thanks,

JPAV