Editing MDS Artifacts in JDeveloper.

Question

I copied my MDS artifacts onto my local development machine and created a file based MDS connection in JDeveloper. The file based MDS Connection is pointing to the directory where I placed my MDS artifacts. When I open an XSD from MDS Connectios in JDeveloper, I am unable to edit the XSD. Is this by design?
What does Oracle suggest for development teams to be able to edit or enhance MDS artifacts? One option is to open these XSD's in XMLSpy or XML editing tools and manage them independently of JDeveloper. Other option is to create a project manually in JDeveloper and import the MDS file Location?
Any pointers would be appreciated.
Regards,
Manoj
303-589-9577

Answer 1

Although, it is not directly supported OOTB, but still you can do that in JDev. This is what I think, you should do in order to edit the MDS artifacts and then, deploy those to the Server.
(1) I assume, you already have a jar used for the MDS Deployment. This jar contains the MDS artifacts, you want to edit.
(2) Follow this Oracle article, which mentions how you can have a JDeveloper - MDS based deployment profile. Then, you can edit the MDS artifacts in JDeveloper and deploy those all also.
(3) But there is a catch here.. You'll always have the content edited by you. Imagine, another developer making changes to the XSD, then, the latest copy of that XSD won't be available in JDeveloper for edition. If you always want to have the latest copy of the MDS, then, I would suggest that you extract the MDS contents from the server (in the form of a jar) and use the same jar in Step 1.
Its a kinda long-shot, but..it is what it is :-)
Hope it helps !