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Objects Involved in Fetching

There are many objects involved in retrieving data in an Enterprise Objects application. The ones you’ll most commonly work with are introduced here.

EOFetchSpecification

A fetch specification provides a description of what data to retrieve from a data source. A fetch specification always includes the name of an entity—in Enterprise Objects, a single database fetch operation is always done from the perspective of a particular entity. A fetch specification usually includes a qualifier—specific criteria to look for when searching the database. A fetch specification can also include a sort ordering, which specifies that the result set should be sorted in a particular way.

EOQualifier

A qualifier is often included in a fetch specification to provide criteria for a particular database fetch. There are a number of different kinds of qualifiers, some of which map to a SQL expression such as AND or OR. A qualifier is commonly compound—that is, a qualifier often consists of multiple qualifiers.

EOSortOrdering

A sort ordering is often included in a fetch specification to specify that the fetch’s result set should be sorted in a particular way.

EOEditingContext

In Enterprise Objects, a fetch almost always takes place within an object workspace called an editing context.

Other objects are involved in a fetch specification, such as EODatabaseContext and EOAdaptorChannel, but you rarely need to interact with these objects programmatically.

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