# Oracle Business Intelligence Beans Sample

## Browsing Metadata

### Overview

`BIMetadata` is a sample application that demonstrates how a BI Beans application can retrieve metadata from a MetadataManager that is connected to the Oracle OLAP (the source of the business data for the application) and to the BI Beans Catalog (where object definitions, like crosstabs and graphs, are saved).

`BIMetadata` extends `BIFrame` and provides a menu with access to a simple connection dialog, which prompts a user for security credentials. It then makes the two connections described above. After the connection is established, the Metadata Browser menu option can be selected to view metadata.

### Code Highlights

There are a few areas of interest in the code which may be particularly useful for developers. The code below is taken from the `getChildren` method and demonstrates how to retrieve subfolders, measures and dimensions from an `MDFolder`:

`MDObject[] children = folder.getFolders();
for(int i = 0; children != null && i < children.length; i++) childrenVec.addElement(children[i]);
children = folder.getMeasures(); for(int i = 0; children != null && i < children.length;
i++) childrenVec.addElement(children[i]); children = folder.getDimensions();
for(int i = 0; children != null && i < children.length; i++) childrenVec.addElement(children[i]);
`

The code below is taken from the `showProperties` method and demonstrates how to retrieve general properties from an `MDObject`:

`text.append("Name = " + mdObject.getName() + newLine);
text.append("UniqueID = " + mdObject.getUniqueID() + newLine);
text.append("ObjectType = " + mdObject.getObjectType() + newLine);
text.append("DriverType = " + mdObject.getDriverTypes().toString() + newLine);
text.append("Path = " + mdObject.getPath() + newLine);
text.append("ShortLabel = " + mdObject.getShortLabel() + newLine);
text.append("LongLabel = " + mdObject.getLongLabel() + newLine);
text.append("Description = " + mdObject.getDescription() + newLine);`

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