Push Client-Metadata to Server

Question

we have a very dynamic metamodel which changes frequently. We don't use EF but an own Database-Technology.

As we didn't find any good documentation on how the server-side metamodel has to be created "by hand", we decided to create the client-side metamodel and import this one into breeze when loading the application.

Now we have the problem, that eventhough we tell breeze to get all Person-Objects and take 3, the server expands all associations and returns more than 3 results. Breeze then cuts the result on the client to 3 and fills the properties.

Now I'm wondering, if we just didn't understand some of the concepts. All we want to do is to tell breeze dynamically how our metamodel looks like without using EF or NHybernate. Is there any documentation on that?

The only documentation on a Schema I found was this one: http://www.breezejs.com/documentation/metadata-schema

But it only explains the client-Side-Metamodel but not the Schema that our Server-Side would have to generate. As far as I see it, the Server-Side-Metamodel gets translated into the client-Side-Metamodel anyways.

Would be nice if someone could clarify or provide a link with all the "basic information" about the topic.

Answer 1

The client metadata is for the Breeze client. The server shouldn't need it, because it already knows what the domain model looks like. The content of server-side metadata typically comes from the database and/or the mapping layer, when using an ORM.

Breeze's server-side WebApi filters attempt to apply the OData query parameters to the IQueryable that comes from the data provider (EF, NH, or whatever). If the data provider's LINQ implementation is incomplete, that could cause the problem you mentioned, in which take didn't work.

Unfortunately, the metadata-schema document is out-of-date. The structure of the Breeze metadata JSON format has changed since then. You are better off looking at an example of current metadata, and following the Metadata by Hand guidelines.