Managing your RDBMS' Extended Properties has never been easier. You can now Add/Edit, or Manage a new schema extended property directly inside of Schema Explorer.

This is a very powerful way to add custom meta-data to the already feature rich meta-data that Schema Explorer provides. You can now easily add database object descriptions, or anything that will help you drive your generation process using a powerful storage on the database server.

Click here for more information on using Extended Properties in Templates.

Managing Extended Properties

To manage your Extended Properties, simply open up the Schema Explorer window. You can open Schema Explorer by selecting the Schema Explorer menu item under the View menu in the Template Editor or Generator menu in Visual Studio.

Schema Explorer has been modeled after SQL Management Studio's Object Explorer. This proven design makes it very easy to navigate and configure schema objects (E.G., Tables, Views, Commands).

In this example, we are going to open the Extended Property Editor for the AccountID column. This column is located under the Account tables' Columns folder; as depicted in the image above.

Once the Schema Explorer window is open, continue to expand nodes until you find the schema object you are looking for. In this example, we are going to open the Extended Property Editor for the AccountID column under the Accounts table as shown in the image above. To open the Extended Property Editor for the AccountID column, right-click on the schema object item and select Extended Properties.

You can open the Extended Property Editor for any schema object (excluding folders). All you need to do is right-click on the schema object item and select Extended Properties.

Extended Properties.png

The Extended Property Editor allows you to view, add, update or remove Extended Properties from any schema object.

Adding a new Extended Property

In this example we are going to add a new Extended Property to the Accounts tables' AccountID column. Please follow the steps in the section above for information on opening the Extended Property Editor for this column.

You can add an Extended Property to any schema object listed in Schema Explorer.

All Extended Properties are managed by the Schema Provider you are using. If a Schema Provider does not support Extended Properties then an NotSupportedException will be thrown when adding, removing, deleting or saving an Extended Property.

Extended Properties.png

Extended Properties beginning with "CS_" and "MS_" may be read-only. Read-only Extended Properties cannot be removed or modified.

Some Extended Properties may already be defined and listed in the Extended Property Editor. These Extended Properties normally start with "CS_" and "MS_", and are managed by the underlying Schema Provider. T

Finally, we will add a new Extended Property by typing an Extended Property Name in the first empty row. Please note that the row will always be at the bottom of the list and a * will be shown in first column. Next, you will need to specify a datatype of the extended property and value. Please see the section below for saving Extended Properties.

Saving Extended Properties

To save your Extended Property values, just click on the OK button. To ignore your changes click on the Cancel button.

All Extended Properties are managed by the Schema Provider you are using. If a Schema Provider does not support Extended Properties then a NotSupportedException will be thrown when adding, removing, deleting or saving an Extended Property.

Editing an Extended Property

You can edit an Extended Property value that is not marked as a read-only by editing the rows Value field.

Extended Properties beginning with "CS_" and "MS_" may be read-only. Read-only Extended Properties cannot be removed or modified.

If you are updating the CS_Description Extended Property when using SQL Server, then the MS_Description Extended Property will be updated. This is because the CS_Description is an alias to the MS_Description.

Removing an Extended Property

You can remove an Extended Property by following one of the methods below.

Start by right-clicking on a row and selecting the Delete menu item.
Click on the row selector (first row) and press the Delete key.

Extended Properties beginning with "CS_" and "MS_" may be read-only. Read-only Extended Properties cannot be removed or modified.

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