Database Integration

The Discovery Machine Modeler has several means of integrating with external data. Process models operate on data using parameters and blackboard variables. The data "flows" through the model serving as both input to and output from the elements of the model.

There are several ways of entering and exporting data. Data can be entered manually via the Object Editor interface. The Object Editor is a set of forms that is generated automatically for entering data for parameters of the process model and blackboard variables. Data can also be accessed via functions calls from within a process model. These functions include:

• File functions for reading and writing text files.
• Reflection functions for working with data from other Discovery Machine project files besides the current one, including accessing blackboard variables and the structure and runtime results of the other models.
• Database functions for creating database connections and executing SQL queries.

The DM Modeler provides ways to easily set up database connections for any ODBC or JDBC datasource. This allows for integration with popular databases, such as Oracle, MS SQL Server, MS Access, and MySQL, and spreadsheets such as MS Excel. Once a database connection has been defined, it is available for a process model to access using the Structured Query Language (SQL). The DM Modeler provides a wizard to facilitate creating SQL queries. There is an additional wizard that imports an entire database table into a new DM Class. The components of the new class match the columns in the database table. A behavior is automatically added to the class to perform the import of the data.

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