REST Data Model
The CData Excel Add-In for Microsoft SharePoint models Microsoft SharePoint entities in relational Tables, Views, and Stored Procedures. The table definitions are dynamically obtained based on your Microsoft SharePoint site. Any changes you make, such as adding a custom field or changing a field's data type, are automatically reflected when you connect.
Tables
Lists in your Microsoft SharePoint site are generated as relational tables dynamically. This means any change you make in your lists, i.e adding a new list or new fields, is reflected in the driver.Since tables are generated dynamically, documentation on specific tables is not available.
Views
Views are tables that cannot be modified. Typically, read-only data are shown as views.
Stored Procedures
Stored Procedures are function-like interfaces to the data source. They surface additional capabilities of the Microsoft SharePoint API such as searching, updating, and modifying information.
Using OData standard
Since the REST API is OData based, server side filters, are done using OData standard. So the driver takes the most of the server filtering, by reading the metadata file and determing which filters can be done on the server.
NOTE: When executing "SELECT *" queries, the Microsoft SharePoint REST API response, does not return all the available fields. So to avoid too many null values, the provider will select all the columns explicitly using the
$select filter. However, the provider will do this only if the $select filter's length is not bigger than 1500, to avoid an error from Microsoft SharePoint REST API regarding the URL length. This is a limitation of the Microsoft SharePoint REST API, so in these cases,
the only way to see the actual value of some columns, is to explicitly select them in your query.