Metadata Authoring Tips

Following are tips for authoring metadata:

The Microsoft Business Data Catalog Definition Editor helps you to author application definition files for the Business Data Catalog. This tool automatically generates the XML for the definition file, so you do not need to manually create the file in an XML editor. It ships as part of the SharePoint Server 2007: Software Development Kit. To use this tool to author metadata for database systems, see Creating a Database Connection by using the Business Data Catalog Definition Editor. To use this tool to author metadata for Web service systems, see Creating a Web Service Connection by using the Business Data Catalog Definition Editor.
When you are authoring metadata in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, copy BdcMetadata.XSD from <Root>\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\Bin to your working folder. Then point the SchemaLocation attribute in the XML file to the schema location. Visual Studio provides IntelliSense capabilities, which greatly simplify editing.
To isolate and debug problems more easily, author and import one entity at a time.
To understand how to write or modify metadata, read Metadata Model.
For helpful development hints, review the comments in the AdventureWorks SQL Server 2000 Sample and the SampleWebService Metadata.

See Also