Well, I haven’t yet figured out what exactly such component will do, but here are some possible uses:
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Avoid the metadata queries at every connection.
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Allow overriding of some db properties in the application, like required/not required, provide application default values etc.
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Allow defining of formatting, conversions and labels on ‘domain’ level (once for all db columns in different tables containing amounts, account codes, dates, currency codes etc).
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Keep lists of possible values (enumerated or from foreign key tables) to be used to populate list boxes etc.
It should be possible to auto-generate most of this at design time.
Hope you get the idea. If anything similar already exists, please let me know.