Data Sources
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This section contains information required to implement a scheduling application that uses a Scheduler bound to an external data source. You can find examples of the data tables structure for a particular data provider used to store appointments and resources.
When you bind the Scheduler to a data source, you will need to map properties of the Appointment, Resource and AppointmentDependency objects to data source fields. To learn about the concept of data mapping, review the Mappings document.
The following topics describe the data structures specific for different data sources.
- Microsoft Access Database
- Microsoft SQL Server
- Business Objects
- Entity Framework
- Entity Framework Code First
- eXpress Persistent Objects (XPO)
- XML Data
- Hierarchical Resource Specifics
- Gantt View Specifics
If you plan to implement import/export operations with MS Outlook or MS Exchange calendars, provide a special field in your data table. This field will store the EntryID for Outlook or Exchange messages. You are advised to set its type as a string with a length of at least 50 for MS Outlook or 130 for MS Exchange. The next generation of MS products may require longer identifiers, so use variable length fields to be on the safe side. For more information, refer to the Synchronization with Microsoft Outlook topic.
It is not necessary to define a relation between the Appointments and Resources tables because the XtraScheduler simply stores the appropriate Resources.ResourceID field value in the Appointments.ResourceID field if all data fields are mapped correctly.
When multiple resources are associated with an appointment (the SchedulerDataStorage.Appointments.ResourceSharing property is set to true, i.e. the resource sharing is switched on), the data field to which the list of resource identifiers is mapped holds XML data, so its data type should be changed to fit the text of the proper length.
Resource identifiers starting from version 15.2 are stored Base64 encoded. Set the SchedulerCompatibility.Base64XmlObjectSerialization property to false to revert to the previous storage format.