I have to use Orion (NGSI v2), and I have a question about the name of entityId of my context;
could I use a simple ID or URN (like NGSI-LD spec)?
What is the best practice?
Thanks a lot
From a NGSIv2 point of view, any entity ID that complies with the identifiers syntax restrictions is valid.
Having said this, in general the simpler entity ID, the better from an integration point of view. For instance, if you are persisting context data using Cygnus sink for PostgreSQL, note that PostGresSQL could use tables which name includes the entity ID (for instance, if the dm-by-entity-database-schema DM is used, see this reference).
Thus, better to use simple entity IDs than URN-like entity IDs, from my point of view.
I think it is better to use URIs for your entities, your path to Linked Data will be smoother. The problem with table names should be fixed by the data storage component for instance by calculating a hash of the URI and converting it to the proper alphabet supported by the database concerning table names ...
Related
We would like to create an OData REST API. Our data model is such that each customer has their own database. All database objects have the same definition across all customer databases, with the exception of a single table.
The customer specific table we will call Contact. When a customer adds a column the system creates a column with a standardised name with a definition translated from options selected by the user in the UI. The user only refers to the column data by a field name they have specified to enable the user to be able to generate friendly queries.
It seems to me that the following approaches could be used to enable OData for the model described:
1) Create an OData open type to cater for the dynamic properties. This has the disadvantage of user requests for a customer not providing an indication of the dynamic properties that can be queried against. Even though they will be known for the user (via token authentication). Also, because dynamic properties are a dictionary, some data pivoting and inefficient query writing would be required. Not sure how to implement the IQueryable handling of query options for the dynamic properties to enable our own custom field querying.
2) Create a POCO class with e.g. 50 properties; CustomField1, CustomField2... Then somehow control which fields are exposed for use in OData calls. We would then include a separate API call to expose the custom field mapping. E.g. custom field friendly name of MobileNumber = CustomField12.
3) At runtime, check to see if column definitions of table changed since last check. If have, generate class specific to customer using CodeDom and register it with OData. Aiming for a unique URL for each customer. E.g. http://domain.name/{customer guid}/odata
I think the ideal for us is option 2. However, the fact the CustomField1 could be an underlying SQL data type of nvarchar, int, decimal, datetime, etc, there are added complications.
Has anyone a working example of how to achieve what has been described, satisfactorily?
Thanks in advance for any help.
Rik
We have run into a similar situation but with our entire dataset being unknown until runtime. Using the ODataConventionModelBuilder and EdmModel classes, you can add properties dynamically to the model at runtime.
I'm not sure whether you will have to manually add all of the properties for this object type even though only some of them are unknown or whether you can add your main object and then add your dynamic ones afterwards, but I guess either would be workable.
If you can get hold of which type of user it is on the server, you could then add only the properties that you are interested in (like option 3 but not having to CodeDom).
There is an example of this kind of untyped OData server in the OData samples here that should get you started: https://github.com/OData/ODataSamples/tree/master/WebApi/v4/ODataUntypedSample
The research we carried out actually posed Option 1 as the most suitable approach for some operations. i.e. Create an SQL view that unpivots the data in a table to a key/value pair of column name/column value for each column in the table. This was suitable for queries returning small datasets. This was far less effort than Option 3 and less confusing for the user than Option 2. The unpivot query converted the field values to nvarchar (string) values and thus meant that filtering in the UI by column value data types was not simple to achieve. (If we decide to implement this ability, I believe this can be achieved by creating a custom attribute that derives from EnablQueryAttribute, marking the controller action with it and manipulate the IQueryable before execution).
However, we wanted to expose a /Contacts/Export endpoint that when called would output the columns from a table with a fixed schema joined on a table with a client specific schema and output to a CSV file. All the while utilising the OData supported filter syntax. One of our customer databases has more than 12 million rows of data and is made up of approximately 30 columns.
To achieve this it looks like our best bet would have been to work with the Microsoft.OData.Core.UriParser.UriQueryExpressionParser class, unfortunately Microsoft in their wisdom have declared this as internal, as well as many of it's dependants.
Walking an abstract syntax tree built from OData supported query options and applying our own visitor to each node to build some dynamic Linq query/SQL seems like a possible solution.
For the time-being we will simply implement a cut-down set of supported $filter criteria without the support for grouping parenthesis.
So I'm creating a database model using Entity Framework's Code First paradigm and I'm trying to create two tables (Players and Teams) that must share a uniqueness constraint regarding their primary key.
For example, I have 3 Players with Ids "1", "2" and "3" and when I try to create a Team with Id "2", the system should validate uniqueness and fail because there already exists a Player with Id "2".
Is this possible with data annotations? Both these entities share a common Interface called IParticipant if that helps!
Txs in advance lads!
The scenario you are describing here isn't really ideal. This isn't really a restriction on Entity Framework; it's more a restriction on the database stack. By default, the Id primary key is an Identity column, and SQL itself isn't really supportive of the idea of "shared" Identity columns. You can disable Identity and manage the Id properties yourself, but then Entity Framework cannot automatically build navigation properties for your entities.
The best option here is to use one single participant table, in a technique called "Table Per Hierarchy", or TPH. Entity Framework can manage the single table using an internal discriminator column. Shared properties can be put into the base class, and non-shared properties can be put on the individual classes, which Entity Framework will composite into a single large table in the DB. The main drawback to this strategy is that columns for non-shared properties will automatically be nullable in the database. This article describes this scenario very well.
The more I try to come up with a solution, I realize that this is an example of the XY Problem. There is not really a good solution to this question, because this question is already a proposed solution. There is a problem here that has led you to create an Interface which you suggest requires the entities which are using the interface to have a unique Id. This really sounds like an issue with the design of the Interface itself, as Interfaces should be agnostic to the entity they are applied to. Perhaps providing some code and showing what your problem actually is would be helpful, since the proposed solution you are asking how to implement here isn't really practical.
According to DDD (Blue book, Evans) a Factory has the responsibility to create an Aggregate Root in a valid state. Does this mean it should be able to create the technical id (objectId in mongoDB world) as well as the domain id?
On the one hand, this seems like a technical detail and it would seem okay to let Mongo handle the creation of the ID.
On the other, enabling querying by id (by having getById in a DDD repository) exposes the technical id to the domain, which in turn would make it the responsibility of the Factory to create it.
Perhaps I can't get my head on the different use-cases / overlap, etc. of Technical Id's vs DomainId's or perhaps I'm being overzealous, but I'd appreciate your opinion anyway.
In short:
In DDD: Should a factory be able to create the technical Id as well as the domain Id?
possible implementation: Hi/Lo ( How to set the hilo sequence starting value in MongoDB Norm?)
EDIT: although the hi/lo way exposes the Factory to the persistence layer, which is something only the Repository should know. hmmm
Thanks
Factories don't have to concern themselves with the ID because the validity of an aggregate is orthogonal to identity. Identity can be assigned in a few different ways, either as a incremental ID from a relational database in which case the repository has to manage it, or as a UUID/GUID in which case it can be assigned by the factory, or repository, or even the calling client which is convenient because then the client has the key by default.
Whenever possible, I try to maintain a single identity for aggregates. I'm not sure if MongoDB requires an additional technical ID, but if it does and the domain ID can't be used in its place, then MongoDB should manage it on its own and behind the scenes.
I want to create an entity in EF without a public key. The backing table has got a non-unique clustered key, but the data in the table conceptually doesn't have a unique primary key it can use.
It looks like EF really doesn't like this. Is there any way of getting EF to accept that the table has no primary key and make it work with it anyway, with no performance hit? I don't care if the result is read-only.
As I understand it, as the Entity Framework is based on the Domain Driven Design concept of Entities, each Entity by definition must have a unique identifier. If the concept which the data in your table represents does not conceptually have a unique identifier then it is not an Entity, in the sense intended by the framework.
With this in mind I'd define a Stored Procedure, make it available through my object context, then make the objects encapsulating this data available via a class which lazy-loads the data, manually maps it into the objects you're using and presents it in a read-only manner.
You may also be able to accomplish this by exposing a view and then mapping your entity to the view.
I have some views that I want to use EF 4.1 to query. These are specific optimized views that will not have keys to speak of; there will be no deletions, updates, just good ol'e select.
But EF wants a key set on the model. Is there a way to tell EF to move on, there's nothing to worry about?
More Details
The main purpose of this is to query against a set of views that have been optimized by size, query parameters and joins. The underlying tables have their PKs, FKs and so on. It's indexed, statiscized (that a word?) and optimized.
I'd like to have a class like (this is a much smaller and simpler version of what I have...):
public MyObject //this is a view
{
Name{get;set}
Age{get;set;}
TotalPimples{get;set;}
}
and a repository, built off of EF 4.1 CF where I can just
public List<MyObject> GetPimply(int numberOfPimples)
{
return db.MyObjects.Where(d=> d.TotalPimples > numberOfPimples).ToList();
}
I could expose a key, but whats the real purpose of dislaying a 2 or 3 column natural key? That will never be used?
Current Solution
Seeming as their will be no EF CF solution, I have added a complex key to the model and I am exposing it in the model. While this goes "with the grain" on what one expects a "well designed" db model to look like, in this case, IMHO, it added nothing but more logic to the model builder, more bytes over the wire, and extra properties on a class. These will never be used.
There is no way. EF demands unique identification of the record - entity key. That doesn't mean that you must expose any additional column. You can mark all your current properties (or any subset) as a key - that is exactly how EDMX does it when you add database view to the model - it goes through columns and marks all non-nullable and non-computed columns as primary key.
You must be aware of one problem - EF internally uses identity map and entity key is unique identification in this map (each entity key can be associated only with single entity instance). It means that if you are not able to choose unique identification of the record and you load multiple records with the same identification (your defined key) they will all be represented by a single entity instance. Not sure if this can cause you any issues if you don't plan to modify these records.
EF is looking for a unique way to identify records. I am not sure if you can force it to go counter to its nature of desiring something unique about objects.
But, this is an answer to the "show me how to solve my problem the way I want to solve it" question and not actually tackling your core business requirement.
If this is a "I don't want to show the user the key", then don't bind it when you bind the data to your form (web or windows). If this is a "I need to share these items, but don't want to give them the keys" issue, then map or surrogate the objects into an external domain model. Adds a bit of weight to the solution, but allows you to still do the heavy lifting with a drag and drop surface (EF).
The question is what is the business requirement that is pushing you to create a bunch of objects without a unique identifier (key).
One way to do this would be not to use views at all.
Just add the tables to your EF model and let EF create the SQL that you are currently writing by hand.