I would like to see a base object for data persistence, i.e. a library which provides an interface for loading and saving data in some way, plus some auxiliary functionalities. This would be implemented by the NxDataSetManager and potentially DatAccess (although I hope nobody needs that anymore in the future) and others. I have two uses for this:
1. Make objects with data persistence independent of the data set manager
There are several objects that need to store and load data in some way, the best known example is maybe the Axis object that stores teach data in .dat files. I also have several objects that have similar data that I want to load and save. They all depend on the data set manager, so whenever there is an incompatible update (and there have been quite a few), I need to update my objects, too. And if you look at the axis object, which also supports other options besides the data set manager, it becomes very clear how useful an abstraction would be.
2. Make individual data persistence solutions viable
The data set manager may be a good universal solution for most Nexeed projects, but sometimes it's not the best. I have a product line of machinery that is getting increasingly standardized and I would like to use my own data persistence (something running directly in the PLC, because I only load local files). I'm even looking into other data formats, because the dat file is also quite dated. But right now I can't really do that because I have a lot of objects that are already relying on the Data Set Manager. Again, an interface for data persistence would solve this issue.
