Vocabularies in WCF Data Services

re: Vocabularies in WCF Data Services

Turker Keskinpala - MSFT — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 18:53:40 GMT

@wvii, I apologize for the trouble. You correctly spotted some of the issues. I just updated the blog post to reflect some changes that were made in the 5.0 RTM release. Could you please try again with the updated code snippets and see if you still have the problem?

Thank you.

re: Vocabularies in WCF Data Services

wvii — Wed, 30 May 2012 20:52:33 GMT

I am having difficulties using the vocabular based on the samples above.

I am pretty new at this but two things appear to be wrong.

I believe:

bool parsed = CsdlReader.TryParse(xmlreaders, out annotationsmodel, out errors, model);

should be:

bool parsed = CsdlReader.TryParse(xmlreaders, model, out annotationsmodel, out errors);

bassed on: msdn.microsoft.com/.../hh919633(v=vs.103).aspx

Also in the annotations file I believe there needs to be a Namespace in the Using and not a NamespaceUri:

according to this:

msdn.microsoft.com/.../bb738545(v=vs.100).aspx

Is there another example, possibly with code for downloading available?

Thank you in advance.

re: Vocabularies in WCF Data Services

MolallaComm — Fri, 18 May 2012 20:53:33 GMT

Hi Turker,

Glad to hear that there is still progress being made on this - I look forward to your upcoming post. I wish that you guys would make it just work end to end for people that are using entity framework and code first POCOs. That is:

I can put data annotation attributes in my POCOs on the server side and have them transparently flow thru to the client. I don't want to have to create/maintain a custom annotations file, I just want it to read the annotations from my code first POCOs, put that in the metadata, and then in the case of silverlight, have the Add/Update Service Reference code generator be smart enough to read the metadata and setup IDataErrorInfo style validation on the generated data objects I will use on the client side. if you could do that, I think you'd make me and a lot of other people really happy! You could do something similar on the clientside for Javascript that would read the metadata and produce validation logic for upshot or whatever toolkit was being used.

Just having to define validation logic in one place would be very nice.

re: Vocabularies in WCF Data Services

Turker Keskinpala - MSFT — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 06:56:11 GMT

Hi Len,

WCF Data Services currently do not support adding annotations into classes e.g a fluent api for annotations. As you mention currently the way achieve your scenario is writing a so called annotations file and configuring the service to pass your annotations on to the $metadata endpoint.

Your annotation example looks syntactically correct. It is hard to say if it semantically what you want without knowing your model and scenario. You seem to be annotating the City EntityType or ComplexType with the Title term from a vocabulary with the strong name Display and you are assigning a string value for the Title. Without knowing your scenario, if I were a client who understands the TItle term from your Display vocabulary, one way I could interpret the annotations is that, I should use the given string values for the types City, State and ZIP as Title instead of say using hte Name properties of those types.

I realize the content is limited to blog posts right now and we are planning to publish a more detailed post on vocabularies soon. Please make sure you visit the forum (social.msdn.microsoft.com/.../threads) for questions and issues.

re: Vocabularies in WCF Data Services

LenChaney — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 20:07:30 GMT

Also, my desire is for a simple description attached to each data element in the metadata. Here is what I have found so far. Is this correct?

</Annotations>

</Annotations>

</Annotations>

Does this look correct?

I also want to document/annotate some enums. My best guess is that I would use a validation vocubulary although I don't want to validate but it does document to choices. Can you show me how that would look?

It appears that this is pretty new so there is not a lot of infor out there right now or at least I cannot find it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Len

re: Vocabularies in WCF Data Services

LenChaney — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 20:06:43 GMT

I have been looking around for information on how to document or annotate the oData metadata. Rather than sending each user a list of the fields and descriptions, I'd like it to appear in the metadata. That might not be what they are looking for but it is getting there and is readable.

From this article, it looks like the best we can do right now is to have the WCF service include a static XML file containing the annotations and that is sufficient although not the best solution going forward.

We do not use the EDM designer but rather our own classes using iQueryable and DataServiceXXXX. Is there a way we can code annotations into the classes?

Sincerely,

Len

re: Vocabularies in WCF Data Services

Turker — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 23:48:59 GMT

Vaccanoll, I apologize for the very late reply on this thread. Thank you very much for your early feedback.

I hear you on the feedback for the client side. We are focusing on the usability and completeness of it at the moment. AnnotationsBuilder was intended to give the flexibility to the user as to how to store and load the annotations.

re: Vocabularies in WCF Data Services

Vaccanoll — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:48:28 GMT

>>As always, we are very interested in hearing your thoughts and feedback.

An occasional, "Thanks for your feedback" on some of your posts would make this more believable.

re: Vocabularies in WCF Data Services

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 10:11:15 GMT

any comments on why not using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations Namespace? thx

re: Vocabularies in WCF Data Services

Vaccanoll — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 15:23:42 GMT

In retrospect, I can see how adding it to the business class could cause massive problems for some client side apps. It may not be a good suggestion.

However, I still think that my point about automatically creating validation objects when the client side classes are made is a good one. (Just maybe not on the actual business class.)