Inheritance, complex vs entity type, and included models.

[chrisspre]

The current plan of record is to infer if a structured type is an entity or complex type (the type kind) based on the presence of a key or usage in a entity set (a).
The check a needs to happen across all structured types in the inheritance hierarchy (b) (up and down) since the whole hierarchy needs to be of one kind.

This check in (b) can only happen inside a single model file otherwise, the usage of a type in one model file might make it an entity and in another makes it a complex type. (c)

During transformation in CSDL, to be able to run the check for a referenced type (as a base type or property type, ...) , one needs to load the referenced/included models, and apply the logic to know the kind and determine if this is the right kind.
Not only is it necessary for the library I am using to produce in-memory EDM models (a more technical reason that might have a workaround). It is also necessary to know the kind to write the correct CSDL (determine if BaseType is allowed, distinguish between Navigation- and Structural property)

[chrisspre]

As discussed 2/25, there is common understanding that it is indeed necessary to load the included models when a model gets translated into CSDL. Situations where this file is not available are considered very rare.

• compiler
• formal documentation
• introductory documentation