Meta Data Services Programming
Accessing Properties
Repository properties store state information about an object. You can access a repository property to acquire information about an unknown object, and then use the property data that is returned to you to acquire more specific information.
The following interfaces are available for manipulating properties: IReposProperty, IReposProperty2, IReposPropertyLarge, and IReposProperties.
| To | Use |
|---|---|
| Retrieve generic data about an unknown object | The IReposProperty property, which exposes methods that enable you to retrieve generic information about an object. You can determine an object type (for example, whether it is a class or interface), retrieve an object identifier, or set and retrieve property values. |
| Retrieve additional data about a specific object | The IReposProperty2 property, which exposes additional data about an object, such as whether it is a base member or a derived member, whether it is read-only or an origin collection, and so on. You can use this interface to retrieve meta data about the interface without incurring an additional round trip to the database. You can also use this interface to get the PropertyDef object that represents the property. |
| Retrieve all properties of an interface | The IReposProperties property, which exposes all properties of a particular interface as a single collection. |
| Retrieve all properties of a class | The IRepositoryObject2 property, which exposes a Properties collection that you can use to access all properties of all interfaces that are implemented by a class. |
| Retrieve, set, and navigate a property object that exceeds 64 kilobytes (KB) | The IReposPropertyLarge property, which provides methods for manipulating binary large objects (BLOBs) and large text fields that exceed 64 KB. For more information, see Programming BLOBs and Large Text Fields. |