Adding support for meta-information to entity and field definitions

[Jacopo Cappellato]

I would like to add support for meta data information to entity and field definitions: for example, define an entity as a dimensional entity (for business intelligence analysis) or a fact entity, or a star schema; or define a field as "additive" (for drill down reports) etc... Of course this information will not affect in any ways the table in the database, it will just be available as an entity additional information. For example, in the bi component we have a screen that shows you all the entities that are star schemas: right now this is done with an hack using the entity package name (following a naming convention)... I would like to use metadata information for this.

The entity definition could be similar to:


        <metadata>fact entity</metadata>
        <metadata>accounting</metadata>

        <field name="quantity" type="floating-point">

            <metadata>additive</metadata>
            <metadata>...</metadata>
        </field>
        ...
    </entity>



What do you think?
Should I go on and implement this?

Jacopo

<entity entity-name="SalesInvoiceItemFact" package- name="org.ofbiz.bi.fact.accounting" title="Sales Invoice Item Fact"> <description>A transaction fact entity for invoices.</ description> <description>Quantity invoiced. From InvoiceItem.quantity</description> I am not sure if "metadata" is the correct word... probably not (any suggestion is much appreciated), maybe something like "keyword" could be good, I don't know.

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