Technology adapters

A Technology Adapter (TA) is what lets a VirtualModel federate a given kind of external resource — a spreadsheet, an XML document, an EMF metamodel, a database, an OWL ontology, and so on. From a modeler's point of view, a TA is a contract: it offers one or several ModelSlots to connect a resource to a VirtualModel, and each ModelSlot in turn offers the roles, fetch requests and behaviours you can use in FML to read, create, update and delete data in that resource, and to be notified when it changes outside Openflexo.

Which ModelSlot a TA offers depends on how the resource's structure is described: a Free ModelSlot when the structure is an external meta-model defined as a Java API, a Type-aware ModelSlot when it is described in a non-Java format such as an XML Schema, and a Reflected ModelSlot when there is no external meta-model at all — the FML VirtualModel itself defines the structure. The technology adapter authoring guide covers the same distinction from the other side, for whoever is writing a new TA.