What is the OLE DB Provider for Commerce Server?
For the latest version of Commerce Server 2007 Help, see the Microsoft Web site.
The OLE DB provider for Commerce Server is a versatile tool that serves as the Commerce Server Data Warehouse Manager and also to a SQL data storage engine. As the Data Warehouse Manager, the OLE DB provider for Commerce Server manages the logical schema that includes the classes, data members, class relations, and keys. The OLE DB provider for Commerce Server also manages the persistent physical storage of the Data Warehouse entities. And, as a typical SQL storage engine, the OLE DB provider for Commerce Server optimizes the data updates and retrievals from the physical database.
The OLE DB provider for Commerce Server is a COM component that accepts calls to a subset of the OLE DB API and processes each request against the data source. The OLE DB provider for Commerce Server provides two distinct paths of functionality. The Fastload property passed in the connection string determines which of these functionalities is used. When the Fastload property is set to True, data can only be written to the OLE DB provider for Commerce Server, and not read. When the Fastload property is set to False, data manipulation statements such as Select, Insert, Update, and Delete are supported.
Of the two programming models that OLE DB supports, the OLE DB provider for Commerce Server only supports the binding programming model. By using the binding programming model, an application creates a binder object that can directly bind to any of the objects supported by OLE DB, namely the Data Source, Session, Command, Rowset, Stream, and Row objects. The Commerce Server OLE DB provider does not support the Rowset programming model, which creates objects in a hierarchy by using the CoCreateInstance method.
Features of the OLE DB Provider for Commerce Server
The OLE DB provider for Commerce Server not only provides the basic functionality of storing the data intelligently, but also lets the developer add logical schema elements such as classes and relations to facilitate the following:
Management of the metadata catalog for the Data Warehouse.
Persistence of the logical entities as SQL objects in the physical store.
The Limiting Factors of the OLE DB Provider for Commerce Server
The following are the current key limitations of the OLE DB provider for Commerce Server:
The logical schema objects (for example, classes and data members) can be created but they cannot be modified or deleted.
Instance selection is not supported for fastload mode. For example, syntax such as Select * from Content cannot be used to browse the data. The only way to browse the data is by using the physically persisted tables in the SQL Server database. Single instance mode does allow Select *.
Referential integrity is maintained by the OLE DB provider for Commerce Server.
Multivalued data members and many-to-many relationships extend the physical schema automatically by adding relevant tables. The addition of the new tables does not affect performance, but the maintenance of the associated link tables can significantly decrease performance.