Managing data access from web applications: data source properties explained

June 25, 2012 by Igor Lozhkin
One of the key data access components in the Arnica Platform is a data source. Data sources, once created, are reusable by various entities (reports, forms, dynamic links, etc.).  Any modifications to a data source immediately affect all related entities, making changes easy to implement. 

Data sources in the Arnica Platform are stored in Arnica UnifiedLogon database. Data source properties may be accessed using a reference to data source from another Arnica application, a web service request, or using Arnica script.

data_source_properties.png

Data sources are defined per application by the platform administrator using Arnica UnfiedLogon Administrator module.

The screenshot above shows a data source CRM 2012 QA, defined for Arnica WebReport.

Data source name is a user friendly reference.

Data source code is programming reference, which is used in web service requests or when open connection is used in programming code.

Data source must be Active in order to be used by Arnica Platform applications. 

Request type specifies whether a data source is used to establish a database connection by specifying a connect string or system DSN, or to execute a web request which requires basic HTTP authentication, or other types of requests. For purposes other than database access requests, the data store may be treated as a tool which stores a pair of logon credentials (user name and password) .

In the Arnica Platform, application (e.g. Arnica WebReportArnica FormServer, Arnica WebPortal) request type property may contain evaluatable expressions, which may dynamically resolve request target data at runtime.

Database prefix is an optional property, which provides additional metadata specifying how an application or program script may reference a database directly using full database identifier, which consists of server name, schema name and database name (for example: Dell34_QA.dbo.CRM2012).