StrataFrame Forum

Can't see Oracle views in Business Object Mapper

http://forum.strataframe.net/Topic5732.aspx

By James E Jernigan - 1/10/2007

When I choose Oracle as my data source in the Business Object Mapper, I can see Oracle tables but I can not see any Oracle views.  In searching the forum posts, it looks like that this was previously possible but may have changed with the last update.  I downloaded the Strataframe software for a trail in December ... so I am assuming that I have the latest version.  I read in a post from the "Issues" forum about the same problem, but no one had replied to that post.

Any ideas or suggestions?

Am I also correct in my understanding that the DDT works ONLY with MS SQL databases and NOT Oracle databases?

Thanks for any help you can offer ....

By StrataFrame Team - 1/11/2007

Oracle views have never worked properly because of the way the data is returned from the OracleConnection.GetSchema() method that we used to determine the structure of the tables and views. 

You are correct in your assumption that the DDT only works with SQL Server.  However, while the DDT can only deploy structures to SQL Server, even if you use Oracle, you can create table structures within it and bind business objects to those structures.  So, if you have a complex view or some sort of table that does not have a mappable data source (such as XML), you can create the structure for that view within the DDT and map your business object to it.

By James E Jernigan - 1/11/2007

Do you forsee this situation changing in the near future?  I saw one post where it was mentioned that version 1.5.2 would be released in January 2007.  Do you think Oracle views will work in the new version?

Did I understand your reply to my original post correctly related to the DDT in that I can create the view structure in DDT and then it would pull the Oracle data that I wanted from multiple tables based on the defined relationships in the DDT?

I have not worked with the DDT yet.  Would I be trying to define a single table structure based on what the view results would look like or define multiple data structures and the relationships between the multiple tables that would make up the view results?

By StrataFrame Team - 1/11/2007

You would define a single table that represents what the results of your multi-table join will look like.  Once the business object is created from this structure, you can fill the business object with a SELECT of the join or from a view that matches the join.
By James E Jernigan - 1/11/2007

I created a 'view' within DDT from 3 tables in the SQL 2005 sample AdventureWorks database that I imported into DDT.

Should I be able to see the SQL view when trying to map a business object to the DDT or would I still need to create the pseudo table structure for SQL views like you described for Oracle views and map the business object to the SQL pseudo table?  I'm still confused on whether or not a business object can be mapped to anything except a 'table'.

I have projects to work on that will use both type of databases.  It would be helpful to know what to anticipate when doing the design work on these projects.

By StrataFrame Team - 1/11/2007

The BOMapper can map to a table in any data source (Oracle, SQL, DDT, OLE DB), however, it can only map to views that are created in SQL (actually on SQL Server, not just within the DDT).  The BOMapper cannot map to views within the DDT because regexing the view syntax became too troublesome to capture every possible field within the view.  So, we left it to mapping to SQL Server views, because SQL Server parses the columns that belong to the view for us.

So, you would still need to create a pseudo table within the DDT that has same structure as your view in Oracle and then, you can map to that.