Working with Information Models in Meta Data Browser
If you are an application developer or model designer, you can use Meta Data Browser as a visual tool for tracking your inventory of information models. You can also discover facts about the objects, collections, and properties that make up an information model.
The Information Models folder shows the information models that are installed in a repository database. The Information Models folder is visible only to repository Administrators, and it is available only when you run the browser as a stand-alone snap-in. Except for sequenced relationship collections, the order in which information model objects appear is undefined.
Information models are the blueprints of items you see in the Contents folder. In its native format, an information model is typically a network of related objects. In Meta Data Browser, information models are depicted hierarchically. When you expand an object, the child nodes that appear are the objects related to the expanded object. Depicting a network structure in a hierarchical format means that some objects appear multiple times. For example, in a relationship, each object will appear as a child node of the other object.
You can install ready-to-use information models (stored as .rdm files) using Meta Data Browser or a separate installation tool that comes with the Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 Meta Data Services Software Development Kit (SDK). Installing an information model extracts information from a model and places it into tables in the repository database. How an information model is used from that point forward can vary considerably across tools, users, and environments.
For more information about how to become a repository Administrator, see Selecting Browse Mode in Meta Data Browser.
Inside the Information Models Folder
In the browser, you can expand an installed information model to view the objects and collections it contains. You cannot create, modify, or delete an information model, its objects, or its properties. To perform those tasks, you must use modeling tools.
You can expand an information model to do the following.
- View objects, collections, interfaces, and members.
- View the inheritance tree for each interface.
- View read-only object properties to see how an object is defined.
See Also
Information Model Fundamentals
Installing Information Models in Meta Data Browser