In the long term, it would be nice to be able to restructure the input data within the Designer into a table defined by a query, for example an SQL view.
At the moment I generate the same data in various structures within the XML file: this approach works OK, but is somewhat inflexible and inflates the file, as well as mixing source data with presentation.
The XmlDataProvider is very convenient most of the time and I’d like to continue using it, although I’m sure it would be possible to reduce the XML file size with a custom data provider.
However, a custom data provider would still not offer the flexibility which I’d ideally like to have available from the user’s point of view.
Sounds a bit like using the InMemoryDataProvider would benefit you here. However I understand the need to wire up everything in the Designer. We’ll add part of this to LL25 by offering to add virtual relations between tables (based on native filtering). However such a fully virtual data source sounds interesting, too. And much of the required technology for it is already present, albeit elsewhere 
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