Creating a Smart Access

If you want your model to aggregate information coming from different sources, you need a smart access.

General

The Smart Access is the delegating layer that controls the logic from which integration access data is read and written. This logic is provided by the integrated Smart Mapper which maps integration entities and properties to Smart Model equivalents, along with the relevant integration accesses through which the integration entities can be accessed.

For more information, see Smart Access

Prerequisites and Use-Case

In this tutorial, you will use the integration accesses you created as part of the Connecting a MySQL Database and Connecting an Oracle Database procedures to create an access which aggregates data from MySQL and Oracle. The two accesses you created contain the following entity types:

• Person
• Company

The smart access you create in this tutorial will work with the AssigneeListModel as its metamodel. The AssigneeListModel smart model will contain a list of Person entities with their respective Company entities assigned. The Person entity data will come from an MySQL database and the Company entity data will come from an Oracle database.

The use case can be summarized as follows:

1. Create database connections:
   1. Connecting a MySQL Database
   2. Connecting an Oracle Database
2. Create an aggregation ParticipantModel which will serve as a source to save the Participant entity and assign it to a newly created SMOOD access.
3. Create a AssigneeListModel combining all the entities and map the entities' properties.
4. Create a smart access.

Creating a ParticipantModel

1. In Control Center, go to Custom Models, click New and configure your model as follows:

2. Using Modeler, create a new Participant entity and add two properties to it:

The difference between the data types comes from how each database treats the ID property.

3. Make sure that your Participant has StandardIntegerIdetifiable as a supertype instead of the RootModel.
4. Click Commit to save your changes.

Creating a SMOOD Access

1. In Control Center, go to Custom Accesses and click New.

2. Select SmoodAccess and configure it as follows:

   Name | Value | Description externalId | smood.local | External ID of your access. name | smood | Name of your access. metaModel | ParticipantModel | Model this access uses. Assign your newly created ParticipantModel here.

3. Click Apply, then Commit.

4. Right-click your new access and select Deploy.

Changing the Company Model

Because the Company entity comes from an Oracle database and this might result in id translation errors, you must change it so that it has a StandardIdentifiable instead of the RootModel as a supertype. To change the model:

1. In Control Center, go to Custom Models.
2. Double-click the Company model to open Modeler.
3. In Modeler, click the Company entity and go to Details -> superTypes.
4. Unassign the RootModel, assign StandardIdentifiable as a super type, and commit your changes.

Creating an AssigneeListModel

1. In Control Center, go to Custom Models, click New and configure your model as follows:

Make sure to add all models you want to use in your model.

2. In Modeler, add the Company entity to the model.

   Make sure the entity you add comes from your custom Oracle access. In other words, make sure the fully qualified name of the entity corresponds to the fully qualified name of the Company entity from CompanyModel you imported from the Oracle database.

3. In Modeler, add the Person entity to the model.

   Make sure the entity you add comes from your custom MySQL access. In other words, make sure the fully qualified name of the entity corresponds to the fully qualified name of the Person entity from the PersonModelMySQL model you persisted in the MySQL database.

4. In Modeler, add the Participant entity to the model.

5. Create a SmartParticipant entity.

6. Drag and drop your mouse pointer from the SmartParticipant entity to the Person entity creating a single aggregation (has a) relation and name the relation person.

7. Drag and drop your mouse pointer from the SmartParticipant entity to the Company entity creating a single aggregation (has a) relation and name the relation company.

Using Smart Mapper

Smart mapper allows you to create relationships between data structures coming from different data sources. To map your entities using smart mapper:

1. In Modeler, click the Person entity, navigate to the Filter tab, mark the Mapper checkbox, and click Commit.
2. On the Person entity, type the name of the entity you want to map the Person entity to in the Choose mapping type link. In this case, we want to map to the smart model Person entity to the Person entity 1:1. When you typed the name of the entity, click on its name. The mapping view is displayed.
3. In the mapping view, in the IncrementalAccess link, type the name of the access the mapping data comes from. In the case of the Person entity, this is the mySQLAccess, because the Person entity data is stored in a MySQL database.
4. Still in the mapping view, click Assign all as is and click Commit. This means you want to map the properties of your Person entity in the smart access to the properties of the Person entity coming from the MySQL database. Once you did that, click Back
5. Repeat steps 2 - 4 for the Company entity. Make sure to map the Company entity using the Oracle access, because that is where the Company entity data is stored.
6. Map the SmartParticipant entity to the Participant entity and open the mapping view.
7. In the mapping view, assign the SMOOD access you created to store the Participant entity data in the IncrementalAccess link.
8. Create a new join for the company property by selecting Join from the drop-down list that appears when you click the downward arrow button. The company property is the has-a relation between SmartParticipant and Company entities you created in Modeler. Map the Participant.companyId property to the Company.id property.
9. Create a new join for the person property by selecting Join from the drop-down list that appears when you click the downward arrow button. The person property is the has-a relation between SmartParticipant and Property entities you created in Modeler. Map the Participant.personId property to the Person.id property.
10. Assign the id property as is and commit your changes.

Creating a Smart Access

To create a smart access:

1. In Control Center, navigate to Custom Accesses, click New, select the SmartAccess entry, and configure it as follows:

2. Click Apply, then Commit, then Deploy.

Testing a Smart Access

1. In Control Center, navigate to Custom Accesses, and switch to your smart access.
2. In Explorer, in the Quick Access search box, type SmartParticipant. A new, empty tab is opened.
3. In the SmartParticipant tab, click New. A new modal window is opened.
4. In the modal window, assign an instance of Company and an instance of Person to the respective properties, click Apply, and then Commit.
5. Your new instance of SmartParticipant is created.