Backend Independent Mapping - Overview
By default, when you change the currently used backend, the same model cannot be fully reused without any refactoring. The reason is that Telerik Data Access is keeping information about SQL type for each table (as well as stored procedure parameters). Keeping information about column types is problematic for cross-backend usage because the SQL types from one backend are not always supported in another backend. Additionally, the different backends have different definitions for the same SQL types. For example, Varchar(Max) is a SQL type defining a string with a maximum length supported by MS SQL Server. The same type is defined as CLOB under Oracle. Another example - NVarchar(n) represents a Unicode string with length 'n' under MS SQL Server, but the corresponding type in Oracle is NVarchar2(n).
Using the Backend Independent API is a way to configure your Telerik Data Access model to support multiple backends. The purpose of the Backend Independent API is to allow you to configure your model without setting any concrete SQL type.
In this section: