In addition to the metadata created or extracted using CloverETL Designer, you can also write metadata definition in the Source tab of the Graph Editor pane. Unlike the metadata defined in CloverETL Designer, such metadata written in the Source tab cannot be edited in CloverETL Designer.

To define the metadata in the Source tab, open this tab and write there the following:

<Metadata id="YourMetadataId" connection="YourConnectionToDB"
sqlQuery="YourQuery"/>

Select any expression for YourMetadataId, type your DB connection that should be used to connect to DB as YourConnectionToDB and type the query that will be used to extract data from DB as YourQuery.

If you want to speed the run of your graph, you can also add to your query "where 1=0" or "and where 1=0" (the last expression should be added to the query terminated by other "where ..." expression.

This way only metadata will be extracted and no data will be read. Remember that such metadata cannot be created in CloverETL Designer and will only be generated at the runtime.