Telerik Data Access mapping types are specific types that describe data model in the ORM. Each mapping type is associated to some .NET and DB type. Telerik Data Access types execute bridge functionality between DB types and .NET types to map them.
There are two main type groups: entities and value types. Value types represent simple data types as numeric values, character values, etc. Entity types are a kind of composite type that consists of simple value types. Value types are used for mapping DB table fields, whereas entities are used to describe DB tables. There are a lot of built-in mapping types in Telerik Data Access. Some of them can be mapped to few .NET types, and others have strict typing and do not support type conversion. Telerik Data Access also has a possibility to create and use custom mapping types that extends the possibility of mapping types using.
Entity Developer for Telerik Data Access provides the possibility to specify Telerik Data Access property types, complex types and enum types.
Below is the description of Telerik Data Access types available in Entity Developer for Telerik Data Access.
The type of a property is specified in the Type drop-down list in the Property Editor dialog box. Besides basic Telerik Data Access types, as a Type of a property it is also possible to select ComplexType or EnumType objects declared in your model. It is also possible to assign any class name of a custom type as a Type of a property. If you use a certain custom type very often, it may be useful to define a shorter name for it. You can do this by defining a TypeDef in the model for your custom type. Note that you have to specify full assembly-qualified names for all except basic NHibernate types. |