Introduction to the Metadata API

How the Metadata API Works

Metadata API Model illustrates how client applications written in SCL use the metadata API to read or write metadata from SAS applications.

Metadata API Model

[Metadata API Model]

Note: The figure shows how one component works with one interpreter; however, the metadata API accommodates multiple components as long as each component has an appropriate interpreter. [cautionend]

metadata client: specifies an application that uses metadata API methods to read or write metadata. For the current release of the SAS metadata API, metadata clients must be written in SCL.

metadata API: specifies a set of software tools that enables users to write applications that access metadata.

metadata type

represents a template that models the metadata for a particular kind of object in an application. The parameter list for a metadata type matches the items of metadata that are maintained for the corresponding object.

SAS/Warehouse Administrator metadata types are listed in Index to SAS/Warehouse Administrator Metadata Types.

component: specifies a group of related metadata types. Each component has an ID (such as WHOUSE) and a name (such as SAS/Warehouse Administrator) that often match the name of the application whose metadata is modeled by the component. The component that is supplied with the current API is WHOUSE (SAS/Warehouse Administrator).

application program interface (API) interpreter

represents a program that translates the API metadata type that is requested by a client to the corresponding metadata object in a repository. The current API has two interpreters: one for SAS/Warehouse Administrator and the other for the Job Scheduler utility.

API interpreters insulate client applications from the details of metadata repositories. If you use the metadata API and there is an interpreter for your target repository, client applications do not need to handle the details of that repository in order to read from it or write to it. Also, if the metadata structure in a repository should change, in many cases only the interpreter would have to be updated and not the client applications that use the metadata API.

SAS application: specifies the SAS application whose metadata you want to read or write. The current API supports two applications: SAS/Warehouse Administrator and its Job Scheduler utility.

metadata repository: specifies a data store that contains an application's metadata. For example, SAS/Warehouse Administrator has multiple metadata repositories--one for each environment and one for each warehouse within an environment. Accordingly, the API provides methods for identifying primary and secondary repositories. Repositories are described in more detail in Metadata Repositories.

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