Advanced mapping in DataObjects.Net 4.6 — Part 1

This article starts a series of posts covering advanced mapping capabilities introduced in DataObjects.Net 4.6.

Idea

The idea of advanced mappings is simple — to have a way to spread groups of persistent classes among different database schemas and even different databases according to number of mapping rules.

Basics

Advanced mapping configuration is based on set of mapping rules, each of them defines how to map a particular entity. Mapping rule consists of two logical parts:

• condition (defines when the rule is applied)
• mapping (specifies in what database/schema to place the target)

The rules could be specified in configuration file or right in code using fluent API. They are processed in the order they appear, so the first matching rule wins.

In addition to collection of rules, two properties specify default mapping: DefaultSchema and DefaultDatabase. These properties are used as fallback values if no rule matches entity being processed. Note, that 'defaultSchema' option is mandatory if any rules for schemas are specified.

XML configuration

OK, we are done with theory. Let's write some real mapping configurations. The most trivial one is setting the default schema. This is already supported by DataObjects.Net since version 4.3. Let's recall it:

<domain defaultSchema="myapp" ... />

Starting from version 4.6, we can write more precise mapping rules. They are defined in <mappingRules> element inside domain configuration.

<domain defaultSchema="myapp" ... >
  <mappingRules>
    <rule namespace="MyApp.Model.Foo" schema="myapp_foo" />
  </mappingRules>
</domain>

The above example maps all types from namespace 'MyApp.Model.Foo' to schema 'myapp_foo'. All other types are mapped to schema 'myapp' (fallback rule). If you have model with multiple assemblies in might be convenient to map to assembly names instead of namespaces:

<domain defaultSchema="mysite" ... >
  <mappingRules>
    <rule assembly="MySite.Model.Blog" schema="mysite_blog" />
    <rule assembly="MySite.Model.Forum" schema="mysite_forum" />
  </mappingRules>
</domain>

The above example splits model into two schemas. One for persistent types related to blog module. The other one is for forum module. The rest is mapped to 'mysite' schema. 

Fluent configuration

As alternative to XML-based configuration you can programmatically define mapping in code. Mapping rules could be added by using DomainConfiguration.MappingRules collection. Two examples from previous section will look like this:

domainConfiguration.DefaultSchema = "myapp";
var rules = domainConfiguration.MappingRules;
rules.Map("MyApp.Model.Foo").ToSchema("myapp_foo");

domainConfiguration.DefaultSchema = "mysite";
var rules = domainConfiguration.MappingRules;
blogAssembly = typeof (MySite.Model.Blog.Post).Assembly;
forumAssembly = typeof (MySite.Model.Forum.Thread).Assembly;
rules.Map(blogAssembly).ToSchema("mysite_blog");
rules.Map(forumAssembly).ToSchema("mysite_forum");

The last example uses hypothetical 'MySite.Model.Blog.Post' and 'MySite.Model.Forum.Thread' types to discover the corresponding assemblies.

To be continiued

This post covered basic ideas as well as mapping to multiple schemas. The second part will cover mapping to multiple databases and related application design techniques. Stay tuned.