An object that provides metadata about how to instantiate
a DataSource object -- it bridges the W3C DOM with our
DataSource descriptions in XML format.
An implementation of the ObjectInput interface
for slurping Records off a stream in their
default flat-file format, which is not
the standard Java serialised object format.
Dispatches the request based on the action
This actually delegates to the NiggleConfig
object that does some reflective magic
to invoke the method this.execFoo() for action "foo".