ARDI 2026 added the new Introspection function to the driver framework.

This optional driver feature is used to ask the driver for information that would be useful when creating a user-interface. For example, the textcycle driver that replays an Excel spreadsheet full of data uses the Introspection function to return the names of each of the columns in the worksheet.

Our UI can then load these column names into a list - making it easy for users to pick exactly which column to bind their properties to.

The introspection function has an optional 'query' parameter that can be passed a string. This can be used in several ways…

1) It can provide the point at a hierarchy/relationship structure you want to ask about (to let you browse through hierarchies), 2) It can provide search, allowing you to enter the first few letts of a name, 3) It can provide simple autocomplete functionality, letting you progressively fill in content. 4) By adding special characters, you can request different types of resource (ie. a '' searches for tables, '/views/' looks only for views, and 'mytable.' searches for the fields inside mytable).

See the textcycle and OPC-UA drivers for simple examples of how this works.