XmlSchemaProvider

This is an early comment, but a student from Neumont University has an xml schema provider partially working. There are several schemas, but in a nutshell it is an xml representation of the sql 2003 standard. The project page is located at http://orm.sf.net (Neumont ORM Architect) ORM not meaning Object Relational Mapping, but rather Object-Role Modeling. The tool itself is an extension to Visual Studio 2005 standard or higher for modeling ORM conceptual models. This xml was designed as a mechanism for generating to the sql standard and overriding per database platform if it's implementation differed from the standard. All of the sql generation tools are xslt based. It would be worth taking a look at for those interested in generating a .nettiers datalayer from an xml file. There are still a few kinks, but impressive from what I've seen in the amount of time that has been put into it.

After some testing and debugging, the Xml based schema provider is ready for some testing.  I'm fairly certain it provides accurate information on all aspects regarding the database structure, and if anyone who also uses or is interested in trying the NORMA tool would like to give it a whirl, please grab the attached DLL and have at it.  Just place the dll in your SchemaProviders directory in your CodeSmith directory, and you will then be able to add new DataSources using it.  The connection string is simply an absolute path to the DCIL file you wish to generate off of.  Let me know if there are any generation issues.

One other important point, is that you don't necessarily have to use the NORMA tool. You can just conform to the xml schema files and anybody can use it, it is not dependant on the NORMA tool. Although hand writing that file might not be the funnest thing in the world. Other doors and opportunities this could open... If Oracle's db was transformed to DCIL there would be immediate support to generate the data layer / business layer, and that would go with any other platform as well. I hope this provider is given some consideration, because IMHO it could be a very powerful tool.