The MetadataManager provides consolidated access to metadata objects that have been collected from one or more Connection objects that connect to underlying metadata stores (such as the Oracle Database or a BI Beans Catalog). This topic contains the following related information:
Connection bean architecture
MetadataManager bean architecture
Example: Merging the contents of multiple MDFolder objects
Relationship between MetadataManager and Connection beans
Diagram: Relationship between MetadataManager and Connection beans
A Connection bean serves as a connection mechanism to Oracle OLAP (which provides multidimensional data within the Oracle Database) and to the BI Beans Catalog. Each instance of a Connection bean represents a particular connection type based upon the type of the underlying server.
MetadataManager recognizes the following connection types:
MDM -- Connects to Oracle OLAP
Persistence -- Connects to a BI Beans Catalog
The MetadataManager bean has the following characteristics:
Serves as a metadata provider for BI Beans.
Represents the root of a consolidated hierarchy of folders. This folder hierarchy provides access to metadata objects that exist in one or more metadata stores.
Extends the MDObject base class. Subclasses of MDObject include classes that represent the various OLAP metadata objects, such as MDMeasure, MDDimension, MDHierarchy, MDLevel, and MDAttribute. The MDFolder subclass of MDObject contains other MDObject
objects including MDFolder
objects.
At runtime, the merging of the contents of multiple MDFolder
objects is based upon the path name that is relative to the root that is specified for each connection instance.
Consider an application with the following assumptions:
An OLAP metadata folder called "Sales Data/Sportswear" that contains the measures Sales, Quota, and Costs.
A BI Beans Catalog folder called "Sales Data/Sportswear" that contains the definitions of calculated measures such as Profit and Quota Achievement.
An application developer can instantiate a MetadataManager bean with connections to both the OLAP service and the BI Beans Catalog, so that the QueryBuilder will present the end user with a single "Sales Data/Sportswear" folder that contains both the native measures in the OLAP folder and the calculated measures in the BI Beans Catalog folder.
The following relationships exist between the MetadataManager bean and the Connection beans that are associated with it:
A single instance of MetadataManager
can handle connections to multiple metadata stores.
A single instance of MetadataManager
can merge common MDFolder objects and serve as a logical metadata provider for OLAP beans.
OLAP beans and applications have the option of connecting to a Catalog directly through an instance of a Connection
bean without using the MetadataManager
.
The following diagram presents the relationship between a single instance of a MetadataManager
and multiple instances of Connection
objects that are associated with the MetadataManager
.