TDV connects to data sources using an adapter. More than two dozen adapters are built into TDV. To see a list of these adapters, you can right-click on an appropriate folder in the Studio resource tree—for example, My Home—and select New Data Source. The New Physical Data Source window appears, with a list of available adapters.

If the adapter you need is not listed in the New Physical Data Source window, or if you need a custom version of an adapter in the list, the Data Source Toolkit provides you the tools to create that adapter. The adapter can then be built, packaged and deployed as an add-on to TDV’s collection of adapters. After successful deployment, it appears in the list in the New Physical Data Source window, and is available in the <host_name>/packages/<package_name> folder of the Studio resource tree so you can open and customize it.

The Data Source Toolkit includes Java APIs and default implementations for most aspects of the adapter components. Where required, an alternate implementation can be provided to customize behavior.

At a minimum, an adapter needs to provide a main Java class with DSAdapterProvider and CisExtensionProvider annotations.

The following can be customized using the API: