Data Designer Extensibility (DDEX) SDK

The Data Designer Extensibility (DDEX) SDK provides documentation, samples, and resources to help you implement a DDEX provider for exposing third-party data source objects in Visual Studio. DDEX providers let you expose objects derived from almost any data source.

DDEX makes Visual Studio the best of tools for building data-driven applications, because it enables any third-party data source to fully participate in the rich Visual Studio design-time experience. By using DDEX, data objects from almost any source can participate in the Visual Studio IDE, appearing as an object hierarchy in the Server Explorer window, and participate fully in the drag-and-drop design-time experience.

Exposing third-party data source objects in Visual Studio requires the following:

• Typically some amount of code to enhance the ADO.NET provider with design-time requirements.

• An XML file describing your data object types that validates against the schema definition file VsDataObjectSupport.xsd, which is provided with this SDK.

• An XML file describing your data view hierarchies that validates against the schema definition file VsDataViewSupport.xsd, which is provided with this SDK.

• A back-end-specific ADO.NET data provider (to provide full support).

The definition files (.xsd) of both schemas are documented in the DDEX XML Schema Reference. In addition to your data provider and XML files, you must use members of the DDEX Managed Class Library Reference to implement your DDEX provider.

In This Section

• Getting Started (DDEX)
  Discusses the content of the SDK.

• DDEX Samples
  A set of four samples that provide increasingly robust and sophisticated DDEX implementations.

• DDEX Provider Implementation
  Discusses the required procedures for implementing a DDEX provider.

• Validating End User Applications of DDEX
  A discussion of steps required for validating an installation of a data provider.

• DDEX XML Schema Reference
  Reference documentation for the two DDEX schemas, VsDataObjectSupport.xsd and VsDataViewSupport.xsd.

• DDEX Managed Class Library Reference
  API reference documentation for the DDEX managed class library.

Related Sections

• Data Designer Extensibility Architecture
  A high-level discussion of the architecture of data designer extensibility.

• DDEX Data Object Support
  Top-level topic in a node that provides detailed documentation of DDEX data object support.

• DDEX Data View Support
  Top-level topic in a node that provides detailed documentation of DDEX data view support.

• Visual Studio Integration SDK
  The Environment SDK provides tools and resources to help with your VSPackage into Visual Studio.