Storage of ORM Metadata in a Relational Database

[exvance]

I have an interesting question (I think;-).

I am experimenting with the posibility of using some of the ORM meta data
for data navigation in my application. For example...

If I have the following Fact Type in my ORM:

Employee(EmpID) had Dependent(DependID)

I might have a menu something like this...

Employee
--> has
-->Dependent

With that in mind I have a few questions:

1. Has anyone used ORM meta data for navigation (something like I am
suggesting)?
2. How should I store the meta data so that I can easily query it?
3. Has anyone ever stored meta data in a relational database?
4. Does anyone have an ORM model defining storage for ORM meta data?

If this is of interest to anyone else I will probably post the results of
this attempt on ORMCentral.com

Thanks,

Eric

 

[Scot A. Becker]

Hi Eric,

If I have the following Fact Type in my ORM:

Employee(EmpID) had Dependent(DependID)

I might have a menu something like this...

Employee
--> has
-->Dependent

With that in mind I have a few questions:

1. Has anyone used ORM meta data for navigation (something like I am
suggesting)?

Yes. Do some searches for ConQuer (Conceptual Query). There are a number of
articles on it at orm.net. Way back in the day InfoModelers released a beta
prototype of the query tool. It was re-released with Visio 5.0 Enterprise
too. It used ORM meta-data to form English-like queries. Then, since the ORM
model was used to generate the actual database, it could generate the SQL
statements to retrieve the requested data.

Very neat stuff; I am surprised MS never took it anywhere.

2. How should I store the meta data so that I can easily query it?
3. Has anyone ever stored meta data in a relational database?
4. Does anyone have an ORM model defining storage for ORM meta data?

There are a couple of meta-models being formed but they are usually treated
as proprietary. If you download my tool (free, URL below) it will export the
ORM meta-data. Thus, you could derive a meta-model from that and use it to
load the resulting database. Also, I have published the XML Schema at
http://www.orthogonalsoftware.com/OrthogonalToolbox.xsd.

However, this "meta-model" was created as per the underlying object model
used by Visio. It is not all-inclusive and if I were creating a tool, I
would do it rather differently.

Hope that helps,
Scot.
................................................
Scot Becker

Orthogonal Software
www.orthogonalsoftware.com