I'm currently writing my first project using core data, and am having trouble working out how to query the relationship between some of my data.
In sql language, i have a Country table, which joins to a CountryLink M-M table containing the following fields:
countryId1
countryId2
bearing
What would be the correct way to model this in Core Data?
So far i have set up a single Country entity and a CountryLink entity (containing only a bearing field) and have added two 1-to-Many relationships from Country to CountryLink ('CountryLink1' and 'CountryLink2').
I've run the project and looked at the Sqlite db structure produced by Core Data (found here, using this sqlite gui), and the M-M join table seems correct (it contains the bearing, CountryLink1 and CountryLink2 fields), but i'm not sure how i would go about carrying out a fetch request for a single Country NSManagedObject to return an array of related Countries and their bearings?
Any help or related links would be much appreciated.
Thanks, Ted
First a word of warning:
Core Data is not SQL. Entities are not tables. Objects are not rows. Columns are not attributes. Core Data is an object graph management system that may or may not persist the object graph and may or may not use SQL far behind the scenes to do so. Trying to think of Core Data in SQL terms will cause you to completely misunderstand Core Data and result in much grief and wasted time.
See the Tequilla advice
Now, forgetting SQL and thinking in object graphs, your entities would look something like this:
Country{
someAttribute:string // or whatever
countryLinks<-->>CountryLink.country
}
CountryLink{
countryID1:string // or whatever
countryID2:string // or whatever
country<<-->Country.countryLinks
}
As you add Country and CountryLink objects you add them to the relationships as needed. Then to find CountryLink objects related to a specific Country object, you would perform a fetch on the Country entity for Country objects matching some criteria. Once you have that object, you simply ask it for the CountryLink objects in its countryLinks relationship. And your done.
The important thing to remember here is that entities in combination with managedObjects are intended to model real-world objects, conditions or events and the relationship between the same. e.g. a person and his cars. SQL doesn't really model or simulate, it just stores.
Related
Using Core Data, I have two entities that have many-to-many relationships. So:
Class A <<---->> Class B
Both relationships are set up as 'ordered' so I can track they're order in a UITableView. That works fine, no problem.
I am about to try and implement iCloud with this Core Data model, and find out that iCloud doesn't support ordered relationships, so I need to reimplement the ordering somehow.
I've done this with another entity that has a one-to-many relationship with no problem, I add an 'order' attribute to the entity and store it's order information there. But with a many-to-many relationship I need an unknown number of order attributes.
I can think of two solutions, neither of which seem ideal to me so maybe I'm missing something;
Option 1. I add an intermediary entity. This entity has a one-to-many relationship with both entities like so:
Class A <<--> Class C <-->> Class B
That means I can have the single order attribute in this helper entity.
Option 2. Instead of an order attribute that stores a single order number, I store a dictionary that I can store as many order numbers as I need, probably with the corresponding object (ID?) as the key and the order number as the value.
I'm not necessarily looking for any code so any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.
I think your option 1, employing a "join table" with an order attribute is the most feasible solution for this problem. Indeed, this has been done many times in the past. This is exactly the case for which you would use a join table in Core Data although the framework already gives you many-to-many relationships: if you want to store information about the relationship itself, which is precisely your case. Often these are timestamps, in your case it is a sequence number.
You state: "...solutions, neither of which seem ideal to me". To me, the above seems indeed "ideal". I have used this scheme repeatedly with great performance and maintainability.
The only problem (though it is the same as with a to-one relationship) is that when inserting an item out of sequence you have to update many entities to get the order right. That seems cumbersome and could potentially harm performance. In practice, however, it is quite manageable and performs rather well.
NB: As for arrays or dictionaries to be stored with the entity to keep track of ordering information: this is possible via so-called "transformable" attributes, but the overhead is daunting. These attributes have to be serialized and deserialized, and in order to retrieve one sequence number you have to get all of them. Hardly an attractive design choice.
Before we had ordered relationships for more than 10 years, everyone used a "helper" entity. So that is the thing that you should do.
Additional note 1: This is no "helper" entity. It is a entity that models a fact in your model. In my books I always had the same example:
You have a group entity with members. Every member can belong to many groups. The "helper" entity is nothing else than membership.
Additional note 2: It is hard to synchronize such an ordered relationship. This is why it is not done automatically. However, you have to do it. Since CD and synchronizing is no fun, CD and synchronizing a model with ordered relationship is less than no fun.
For example, I have attributes for an entity like this:
category_id
data
I don't have complicated operations. I only access the records separately by category_id == X. I am wondering if I should use one entity to store all records or split it into N entities where each one represents one category? Should I just consider and design it just like a SQL database?
This question is not really appropriate for SO (too broad and opinion-based), but here goes...
Data modeling should generally be independent of the underlying representation. If different categories are different entities, model them that way. It sounds to me like this is not the case, and if that's so, leave them as one entity.
We're working on a CMS project with EF and MVC. We've Recently encountered a problem,
Please consider these tables:
Applications
Entities
ProductsCategories
Products
Relations are in this order:
Applications=>Entities=>ProductCategories=>Products
When we select a product by it's Id, always we should check if requested ProductsId is
just for a specific application stored in Applications table, These is for preventing load other applications products,
what is the best way to get a product for specific application id, We have two choice:
Instead of define a relation between products and applications we can do joins with productsCategories,entities, and applications to find it
=> when we want to get products we don't want to know about entities or other tables that we should join it to access applications
we can define a separate relation between products and applications and get it by simple select query
which of these is the best way and why?
Manish first thanks for your comment,Then please consider this that some of our tables does not have any relation with Entities for these tables we should define a relation with Entites to access Applications or define a separate as relation as mentioned above,For these tables we just define a relation and does not have extra work,except performance issue.still some of other tables has relations with entites so for this one defining a separat relation has extra work,
At last please consider this,in fact all of tables should access 'Entities' some by separate relation and others can access from there parents
actually for relation between products and entities we didn't define a separate relation because it doesn't has performance issue,But for relation between products and entities we should consider performance issue because in every request we should access Applications to check request Id is for current Application
So what is your idea?
Let's look at your options
Instead of defining a relationship, you can join the three tables to get the correct set of products: In this case, you won't have to make any database changes and anyway, you won't be fetching all the joined tables data, you would fetch only that data, which you have specified in your Linq Select List. But then, 3-tables join can be a little performance degrading when the number of rows will be very high at some point of time
You can define a separate relationship between the two said tables: In this case you would have to change your database structure, that would mean, making changes in your Entity and Entity Model, and lot of testing. No doubt, it will mean simple code, ease of usage which is always welcome.
So you see, there is no clear answer, ultimately it depends on you and your code environment what you want to go with, as for me, I would go for creating a separate relationship between the Application and Product entity, cause that would cause a cleaner code with a little less effort. Besides as they say, "Code around your data-structure, and not the otherway around"
I am about to embark on a project for work that is very outside my normal scope of duties. As a SQL DBA, my initial inclination was to approach the project using a SQL database but the more I learn about NoSQL, the more I believe that it might be the better option. I was hoping that I could use this question to describe the project at a high level to get some feedback on the pros and cons of using each option.
The project is relatively straightforward. I have a set of objects that have various attributes. Some of these attributes are common to all objects whereas some are common only to a subset of the objects. What I am tasked with building is a service where the user chooses a series of filters that are based on the attributes of an object and then is returned a list of objects that matches all^ of the filters. When the user selects a filter, he or she may be filtering on a common or subset attribute but that is abstracted on the front end.
^ There is a chance, depending on user feedback, that the list of objects may match only some of the filters and the quality of the match will be displayed to the user through a score that indicates how many of the criteria were matched.
After watching this talk by Martin Folwler (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI_g07C_Q5I), it would seem that a document-style NoSQL database should suit my needs but given that I have no experience with this approach, it is also possible that I am missing something obvious.
Some additional information - The database will initially have about 5,000 objects with each object containing 10 to 50 attributes but the number of objects will definitely grow over time and the number of attributes could grow depending on user feedback. In addition, I am hoping to have the ability to make rapid changes to the product as I get user feedback so flexibility is very important.
Any feedback would be very much appreciated and I would be happy to provide more information if I have left anything critical out of my discussion. Thanks.
This problem can be solved in by using two separate pieces of technology. The first is to use a relatively well designed database schema with a modern RDBMS. By modeling the application using the usual principles of normalization, you'll get really good response out of storage for individual CRUD statements.
Searching this schema, as you've surmised, is going to be a nightmare at scale. Don't do it. Instead look into using Solr/Lucene as your full text search engine. Solr's support for dynamic fields means you can add new properties to your documents/objects on the fly and immediately have the ability to search inside your data if you have designed your Solr schema correctly.
I'm not an expert in NoSQL, so I will not be advocating it. However, I have few points that can help you address your questions regarding the relational database structure.
First thing that I see right away is, you are talking about inheritance (at least conceptually). Your objects inherit from each-other, thus you have additional attributes for derived objects. Say you are adding a new type of object, first thing you need to do (conceptually) is to find a base/super (parent) object type for it, that has subset of the attributes and you are adding on top of them (extending base object type).
Once you get used to thinking like said above, next thing is about inheritance mapping patterns for relational databases. I'll steal terms from Martin Fowler to describe it here.
You can hold inheritance chain in the database by following one of the 3 ways:
1 - Single table inheritance: Whole inheritance chain is in one table. So, all new types of objects go into the same table.
Advantages: your search query has only one table to search, and it must be faster than a join for example.
Disadvantages: table grows faster than with option 2 for example; you have to add a type column that says what type of object is the row; some rows have empty columns because they belong to other types of objects.
2 - Concrete table inheritance: Separate table for each new type of object.
Advantages: if search affects only one type, you search only one table at a time; each table grows slower than in option 1 for example.
Disadvantages: you need to use union of queries if searching several types at the same time.
3 - Class table inheritance: One table for the base type object with its attributes only, additional tables with additional attributes for each child object type. So, child tables refer to the base table with PK/FK relations.
Advantages: all types are present in one table so easy to search all together using common attributes.
Disadvantages: base table grows fast because it contains part of child tables too; you need to use join to search all types of objects with all attributes.
Which one to choose?
It's a trade-off obviously. If you expect to have many types of objects added, I would go with Concrete table inheritance that gives reasonable query and scaling options. Class table inheritance seems to be not very friendly with fast queries and scalability. Single table inheritance seems to work with small number of types better.
Your call, my friend!
May as well make this an answer. I should comment that I'm not strong in NoSQL, so I tend to lean towards SQL.
I'd do this as a three table set. You will see it referred to as entity value pair logic on the web...it's a way of handling multiple dynamic attributes for items. Lets say you have a bunch of products and each one has a few attributes.
Prd 1 - a,b,c
Prd 2 - a,d,e,f
Prd 3 - a,b,d,g
Prd 4 - a,c,d,e,f
So here are 4 products and 6 attributes...same theory will work for hundreds of products and thousands of attributes. Standard way of holding this in one table requires the product info along with 6 columns to store the data (in this setup at least one third of them are null). New attribute added means altering the table to add another column to it and coming up with a script to populate existing or just leaving it null for all existing. Not the most fun, can be a head ache.
The alternative to this is a name value pair setup. You want a 'header' table to hold the common values amoungst your products (like name, or price...things that all rpoducts always have). In our example above, you will notice that attribute 'a' is being used on each record...this does mean attribute a can be a part of the header table as well. We'll call the key column here 'header_id'.
Second table is a reference table that is simply going to store the attributes that can be assigned to each product and assign an ID to it. We'll call the table attribute with atrr_id for a key. Rather straight forwards, each attribute above will be one row.
Quick example:
attr_id, attribute_name, notes
1,b, the length of time the product takes to install
2,c, spare part required
etc...
It's just a list of all of your attributes and what that attribute means. In the future, you will be adding a row to this table to open up a new attribute for each header.
Final table is a mapping table that actually holds the info. You will have your product id, the attribute id, and then the value. Normally called the detail table:
prd1, b, 5 mins
prd1, c, needs spare jack
prd2, d, 'misc text'
prd3, b, 15 mins
See how the data is stored as product key, value label, value? Any future product added can have any combination of any attributes stored in this table. Adding new attributes is adding a new line to the attribute table and then populating the details table as needed.
I beleive there is a wiki for it too... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity-attribute-value_model
After this, it's simply figuring out the best methodology to pivot out your data (I'd recommend Postgres as an opensource db option here)
I'm wondering if it's possible to "rebuild" relationships in Core Data.
Basically, I messed up when creating my entities, getting data from a SQL server i filled my entities as tables (one table by one table) and it seems now that the relationships are not working.
Let's take an example :
I've set up my model with my two entities (department and employee), with a relation one-to-many "myRelationWithDepartment" (one department many employees), and generated the managed object subclasses accordingly.
I got table department and table employees from my SQL server and inserted all employees in my entity employee and only then (because i have to retrieve first employees) all departments in my entity department, using Core Data, saving context, etc. Everything is fine, just the relationship is not working.
Now I'm able to make a fetch request upon a department or an employee, it works fine. But if I retrieve an employee and do this :
[[anEmployee myRelationWithDepartment] departmentName];
it's returning nil, no compilation warnings or errors, it just seems that no department is linked to an employee.
So I assume that the relations are not working.
I've included in the model the "id"s I had in my SQL tables, so I'm able to link them manually (but i have multiple entities actually).
I've gone through the Core-Data guide and found this :
[aDepartment.employees addObject:newEmployee]; // do not do this!
then KVO change notifications are not emitted and the inverse relationship is not updated correctly.
Recall that the dot simply invokes the accessor method, so for the same reasons:
[[aDepartment employees] addObject:newEmployee]; // do not do this, either!
That's why I assume relationships are badly shaped. Is there a way to rebuild the relationships afterwards (since i share some id's in the model between entities)?
I dig up more in Apple's documentation and relationship has to be filled manually :
To create the relationship "link" :
anEmployee.myRelationWithDepartment = departmentObject;
Alternatively, you can use:
[department addEmployeeObject:anEmployee];
Then when fetching objects you can access properties of related entities.
The problem is that Core-Data is "sold" as everything is doing quite by itself and in reality it's much deeper as it seems at first glance.