Accessing Data

Choice of data access technology is a major consideration in deciding whether to use EJB, as one of the choices (entity beans) is available only when using EJB. Data access strategy often determines the performance of enterprise systems, making it a crucial design issue.

Note 

Note that container support for data source connection pooling is available in the web container, not merely the EJB server.

J2EE Data Access Shibboleths

Many J2EE developers are inflexible regarding data access. The following assumptions, which have profound implications for design, are rarely challenged:

  • Portability between databases is always essential

  • Object/Relational (O/R) mapping is always the best solution when working with relational databases

I believe that these issues should be considered on a case-by-case basis. Database portability isn't free, and may lead to unnecessary complexity and the sacrifice of performance.

O/R mapping is an excellent solution in some cases (especially where data can be cached in the mapping layer), but often a "domain object model" must be shoehorned onto a relational database, with no concern for efficiency. In such cases, introducing an O/R mapping layer delivers little real value and can be disastrous for performance. On the positive side, O/R mapping solutions, if they are a good fit in a particular application, can free developers of the chore of writing database access code, potentially boosting productivity.

Important 

Whatever the data access strategy we use, it is desirable to decouple business logic from the details of data access, through an abstraction layer.

It's often assumed that entity beans are the only way to achieve such a clean separation between data access and business logic. This is a fallacy. Data access is no different from any other part of a system where we may wish to retain a different option of implementation. We can decouple data access details from the rest of our application simply by following the good OO design principle of programming to interfaces rather than classes. This approach is more flexible than using entity beans since we are committed only to a Java interface (which can be implemented using any technology), not one implementation technology.

Entity Beans

Entity beans are a questionable implementation of a sound design principle. It's good practice to isolate data access code. Unfortunately, entity beans are a heavyweight way of achieving this, with a high runtime overhead. Entity beans don't tie us to a particular type of database, but do tie us to the EJB container and to a particular O/R mapping technology.

There exist serious doubts regarding the theoretical basis and practical value of entity beans. Tying data access to the EJB container limits architectural flexibility and makes applications hard to test. We are left with no choice regarding the other advantages and disadvantages of EJB. Once the idea of entity beans having remote interfaces is abandoned (as it effectively is in EJB 2.0), there's little justification for modeling data objects as EJBs at all.

Despite enhancements in EJB 2.0, entity beans are still under-specified. This makes it difficult to use them for solving many common problems (entity beans are a very basic O/R mapping standard). They often lead to inefficient use of relational databases, resulting in poor performance.

In Chapter 8 we'll examine the arguments surrounding entity bean use in detail.

Java Data Objects (JDO)

JDO is a recent specification developed under the Java Community Process that describes a mechanism for the persistence of Java objects to any form of storage. JDO is most often used as an O/R mapping, but it is not tied to RDBMSs. For example, JDO may become the standard API for Java access to ODBMSs. JDO offers a more lightweight model than entity beans. Most ordinary Java objects can be persisted as long as their persistent state is held in their instance data. Unlike entity beans, objects persisted using JDO do not need to implement any special interfaces. JDO also defines a query language for running queries against persistent data. It allows for a range of caching approaches, leaving the choice to the JDO vendor.

JDO is not currently part of J2EE. However, it seems likely that it will eventually become a required API in the same way as JDBC and JNDI.

JDO provides the major positives of entity beans while eliminating most of the negatives. It integrates well with J2EE server transaction management, but is not tied to EJB or even J2EE. The disadvantages are that JDO implementations are still relatively immature, and that as a JDO implementation doesn't come with most J2EE application servers, we need to obtain one from (and commit to a relationship with) a third-party vendor.

Other O/R Mapping Solutions

Leading O/R mapping products such as TopLink and CocoBase are more mature than JDO. These can be used anywhere in a J2EE application and offer sophisticated, high-performance O/R mapping, at the price of dependence on a third-party vendor and licensing cost comparable to J2EE application servers. These solutions are likely to be very effective where there is a natural O/R mapping.

JDBC

Implicit J2EE orthodoxy holds that JDBC and SQL (if not RDBMSs themselves) are evil, and that J2EE should have as little to do with them as possible. I believe that this is misguided. RDBMSs are here to stay, and this is not such a bad thing.

The JDBC API is low-level and cumbersome to work with. However, slightly higher-level libraries (such as the ones we'll use for this book's sample application) make it far less painful to work with. JDBC is best used when there is no natural O/R mapping, or when we need to use advanced RDBMS features like stored procedures. Used appropriately, JDBC offers excellent performance. JDBC isn't appropriate when data can naturally be cached in an O/R mapping layer.



Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development
Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 On Demand
ISBN: B0085SG5O4
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 183

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