A collection of PowerSurge Publishing classes to handle dynamically defined
data records.
- DataFieldDefinition
- A definition of a data field. At a minimum, the definition will provide the name of the field. Each field is identified by its common name, which is composed by taking any other form of the name, converting it to lower case, and removing all punctuation and spaces. A definition may also contain a formatting rule, depending on the type of data.
- DataField
- Consists of a DataFieldDefinition and a data value. The value is always carried as a String. Note that DataFields are self-defining, since the definition is part of the field itself.
- DataFieldAlias
- Another name for a data field.
- DataDictionary
- Consists of two collections: one of DataField objects, and another of DataFieldAlias objects.
- Column
- A pointer to a particular entry in a particular data dictionary. A Column is also capable of maintaining statistics (average and maximum length, for example) about all the data stored in that column, for a particular collection of records containing that column.
- RecordDefinition
- A collection of Column/DataFieldDefinition objects in a particular sequence, and all sharing a particular DataDictionary.
- DataRecord
- A collection of DataField objects. Note that, since each DataField object is self-defining, each DataRecord can also be considered to be self-defining. However, for most useful operations involving more than one DataRecord, the records are assumed to have the same RecordDefinition.
- DataStore (Interface)
- A standard interface that takes DataRecord objects and stores them somewhere for later retrieval. Note that a DataStore must have a RecordDefinition.
- DataSource (Interface)
- A standard interface from which DataRecord objects can be retrieved. Note that a DataSource must have a RecordDefinition.
- DataSet
- A collection of DataRecord objects. A DataSet is both a DataStore and a DataSource.