On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:22:07 +0200, Jacopo Cappellato <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> On Jul 27, 2008, at 9:57 PM, David E Jones wrote:
>
>>
>> If I understand this right some other words to consider might be
>> "tag" or "label" or the like instead of metadata. Technically an
>> entity definition is itself "meta data" because it describes the
>> data. In a way this would be a sort of "meta meta data" because it
>> is describes the stuff that describes the data.
>>
>> For this specific need maybe something less generic might actually
>> work better. Are there really other types of tags that we would want
>> to associate with the entities, or should we just stick with
>> something BI-specific. Also, for the BI need would we need just one
>> tag, or multiple tags for a given entity? It might also be nice to
>> have the possible values, or at least some of them, built into the
>> XSD to keep them consistent and self-documenting.
>>
>> I guess what I'm thinking after all this is that a simple attribute
>> like "olap-type" or something with the options in the XSD might be
>> both easier to use (self-document, less error-prone) and better fit
>> the problem.
>
> Thanks David, this would be enough for what I need to do; I just need
> a similar attribute for the "entity" and "view-entity" elements:
> should I use the same name ("olap-type") of the attribute of the
> "field" element?
> But maybe olap-type is a good name also for the entity attribute (with
> values: "fact", "star-schema", "dimension").
>
> What do you think?
>
> Jacopo
>
>>
>>
>> -David
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jul 27, 2008, at 10:21 AM, Jacopo Cappellato wrote:
>>
>>> 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:
>>>
>>> <entity entity-name="SalesInvoiceItemFact" package-
>>> name="org.ofbiz.bi.fact.accounting" title="Sales Invoice Item Fact">
>>> <description>A transaction fact entity for invoices.</
>>> description>
>>> <metadata>fact entity</metadata>
>>> <metadata>accounting</metadata>
>>>
>>> <field name="quantity" type="floating-point">
>>> <description>Quantity invoiced. From
>>> InvoiceItem.quantity</description>
>>> <metadata>additive</metadata>
>>> <metadata>...</metadata>
>>> </field>
>>> ...
>>> </entity>
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> What do you think?
>>> Should I go on and implement this?
Unless someone else sees an issue or opportunity it looks fine to me...
-David
