Remove Devices from the Logical Model
Because devices are a physical concern (as far as Dataphor is concerned), they should not be declared or configured as part of the logical model. Rather, they should be configured as an attribute of the instance, and allowed to be changed as part of deployment, rather than decided on as part of development.
To enable this functionality, the following changes are proposed:
Remove the in clause from the create table statement
Remove device DDL statements
Expand the representation of devices in the system catalog:
DeviceSettings - specifies configuration settings
DeviceTables - specifies which devices contain which tables
Make the following device tables updatable:
Devices
DeviceSettings
DeviceTables
DeviceTypes
DeviceOperators
DeviceUsers
Back the device tables with a Devices.config file in the instance directory
Expose the device configuration in the instance
Add the ability to auto-register device libraries as needed when devices are created
Defer device determination of base tables to bind-time
Provide a mechanism to default device determination per instance, and library.