Strongly-typed database schema API that doesn't rely on DataTable

[roji]

The current API to expose database schema is DbConnection.GetSchema(). This has some disadvantages:

• Reliance on DataTable
• A weakly-typed API. Aside from being less usable, this promotes less uniformity across providers as different weakly-typed properties can be populated.

A modern, strongly-typed resultset schema API has already been added - DbDataReader.GetColumnSchema() effectively replaces DbDataReader.GetSchema() which suffers from the same shortcomings as DbConnection.GetSchema().

See #15953 for previous discussion.

[karelz]

We need formal API proposal. We expect it will be rather complex.

[roji]

Note the substantial previous discussion in #15953 which should be taken into account. The existing weakly-typed DataTable-based API can definitely serve as a starting point, but this is definitely the opportunity to clearly separate common metadata from SQL Server-centric metadata etc.

[karelz]

@roji do you plan to create the proposal?

[roji]

Well, @saurabh500 made a good start in #15953, it's worth pursuing that with the community. I'm not going to have the time to lead the discussion, although I'd be happy to review/contribute.

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