When you connect to case data, you can connect either with or without metadata.

When connecting without metadata, you specify only the CDSC (in the Data Source connection property) and the location of the case data. For example, you can connect to a .sav file without metadata like this:

(In these examples, each connection property is presented on a separate line for clarity. In practice you should specify the connection string without line breaks.)

When you connect without metadata, no MDM document is available and you can access only the case data.

When you connect using metadata, you can use either an MDM document or an MDSC. For example, you can connect to a .sav file using the MDSC like this:

In this example, the CDSC and case data location are not specified. This is because the uses the MDSC to generate an MDM document and then uses the MDM Document.DataSources collection to identify the CDSC and case data location to use. This only works if the MDSC populates the DataSources collection of the MDM document. However, both and Quanvert DSC do this.

The OLE DB Provider can connect to the case data using an MDM document in a similar way. For example:

In this instance, the current data source in the MDM document is used to connect to the case data. However, you can override the current data source by specifying the CDSC to be used. For example:

When you do this, the OLE DB Provider retrieves the location of the .sav case data from the MDM DataSources collection using the default data source for the SPSS SAV CDSC. You can also override both the CDSC and the case data location, like this:

In all of these examples, the MDM document loaded by the is available using the MR MDM document property. Another approach is to use the MDSC ahead of time, create the MDM and then pass the MDM document to both connections using the MeowMoniker string returned by the CreateDocumentObjectString method. For more information, see Connecting using an open MDM document.