The CData Excel Add-In for Facebook supports the use of user defined views: user-defined virtual tables whose contents are decided by a preconfigured query. User defined views are useful in situations where you cannot directly control the query being issued to the driver; for example, when using the driver from a tool.

Use a user defined view to define predicates that are always applied. If you specify additional predicates in the query to the view, they are combined with the query already defined as part of the view.

There are two ways to create user defined views:

• Create a JSON-formatted configuration file defining the views you want.

Defining Views Using a Configuration File

User defined views are defined in a JSON-formatted configuration file called UserDefinedViews.json. The add-in automatically detects the views specified in this file.

You can also have multiple view definitions and control them using the UserDefinedViews connection property. When you use this property, only the specified views are seen by the add-in.

This user defined view configuration file is formatted so that each root element defines the name of a view, and includes a child element, called query, which contains the custom SQL query for the view.

For example:

{
	"MyView": {
		"query": "SELECT * FROM Posts WHERE MyColumn = 'value'"
	},
	"MyView2": {
		"query": "SELECT * FROM MyTable WHERE Id IN (1,2,3)"
	}
}

Use the UserDefinedViews connection property to specify the location of your JSON configuration file. For example:

"UserDefinedViews", "C:\\Users\\yourusername\\Desktop\\tmp\\UserDefinedViews.json"

Schema for User Defined Views

In order to avoid a view's name clashing with an actual entity in the data model, user defined views are exposed in the UserViews schema by default. To change the name of the schema used for UserViews, reset the UserViewsSchemaName property.

Working with User Defined Views

For example, a SQL statement with a user defined view called UserViews.RCustomers only lists customers in Raleigh:

SELECT * FROM Customers WHERE City = 'Raleigh';

An example of a query to the driver:

SELECT * FROM UserViews.RCustomers WHERE Status = 'Active';

Resulting in the effective query to the source:

SELECT * FROM Customers WHERE City = 'Raleigh' AND Status = 'Active';

That is a very simple example of a query to a user defined view that is effectively a combination of the view query and the view definition. It is possible to compose these queries in much more complex patterns. All SQL operations are allowed in both queries and are combined when appropriate.