As previously mentioned, report model projects are what the Model Designer uses to generate models. There are three kinds of files that it uses to generate models. These files correlate to the major steps in models generation. The first kind of file is the Data Source (.ds). The second type of file is the Data Source view. The Data Source view provides the model information about the underlying data store. It is kind of like an entity relationship diagram, in that it provides information about the database schema, but is written in XML. The model uses the Data Source view to query the database, making the Data Source view the bridge between the model and the data source. The final type of file is the actual model file (.sdml). The model can only reference one data source, and one Data Source view. |