Metadata
The metadata cache is used to speed up reflection-based operations. It is used by the Modeling framework for property change notifications and validation. In Tortuga Chain, it is used for SQL generation and materializing objects from result sets.
In addition to the basics such as a list of properties and constructors, the metadata cache exposes data extracted from commonly used attributes. This can greatly improve performance when attribute-stored data is frequently used.
.NET Attributes
- Column
- Key
- NotMapped
- Table
- Validation
Tortuga Anchor Attributes
- CalculatedField
- Decompose
- IgnoreOnInsert
- IgnoreOnUpdate
The attribute extraction logic isn't extensible. So if there are other attributes you need, feel free to submit a bug report.
Code Generation Support
In order to make code generation easier, the ClassMetadata also includes a CSharpFullName property. This converts the IL name such as System.Collections.Generic.List1[System.Int32]` into something that C# can understand. It supports generics, nested classes, and nested generic classes (which are actually harder than you'd think).
There is also a ColumnsFor method. This returns the list of database columns that are mapped to properties, honoring the Column, NotMapped, and Decompose attributes.