Proposed Schema Editing and Validation enhancements for Connectors and Editing Applications

[christophermlawson]

Data in an iModel is described using BIS Schemas, basic functionality exists today to create schemas but it is in alpha and does not provide sufficient validation for the schemas it produces. To support editing applications, we are planning to add schema editing functionality targeted at user customizations of the data model in an iModel. Our goal is to make a subset of editing functionality production ready as soon as possible and expand it as requested.

MVP User schema customization support:

• Create a new Schema
• Within that new schema
  o Create a new class that is a BisCore.Element subclass
  o Create a new class that is a BisCore.ElementUniqueAspect or BisCore.ElementMultiAspect subclass
  o Add a new property to one of the newly created classes. See below* for rules on newly added properties.
  o Delete a class**
  o Delete a property**
• Add a new property to select classes in select Bentley delivered schemas

• Properties must:
  1. Names must be in the format <user_prefix>_. This ensures that there will be no name collision with standard properties added to base classes
  2. Properties are limited to types: double, string, date time and integer

** Once a schema has been imported into an iModel deleting a class or a property is not possible.

In addition the Editing and Validation code will be moved from ecschema-metadata to its own package.

Timeline:

• Move Editing and Validation code to its own package – Currently WIP
• Define API to cover MVP edit scenarios and add happy path tests
• Collect feedback, add test cases and work on incremental user customizations and merging customizations with new schema
• Update API based on feedback and move to beta
• Collect 2nd round of feedback and continue testing
• Update API based on feedback and move to public

If you are interested in providing feedback please engage us through this post.