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Java Programming IT Technology

Object-Relation Mapping without the Container 49

Posted by Hemos from the yet-another-aspect-to-learn dept.
Justin Powell writes "If you follow the latest developer buzz then you've likely heard of IOC (Inversion of Control) containers and AOP (aspect-oriented programming). Like many developers, however, you may not see where these technologies fit into your development efforts. Learn where they can fit with a hands-on introduction to using Hibernate and Spring to build a transactional persistence tier for your enterprise applications."
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Object-Relation Mapping without the Container More

Object-Relation Mapping without the Container

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  • Yeehoo, more tools....... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MrIrwin ( 761231 ) on Monday May 17, 2004 @07:54AM (#9172049) Journal
    After all, Java development environments are well known for thier conciseness and simple nature. Let's throw another couple of tools into the works....

    • Re:Yeehoo, more tools....... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bay43270 ( 267213 ) on Monday May 17, 2004 @09:37AM (#9172616) Homepage
      After all, Java development environments are well known for thier conciseness and simple nature. Let's throw another couple of tools into the works....

      Your comment seems to sum up J2EE fairly well. This is why Spring was created. A container should provide a framework for containing things. period. If you want persistence, add a persistence framework. If you want transactions, add a transaction framework. If you think you need all the extra complexity, feel free to add it.

      J2EE, however is complex by default. Spring tries to get away from that. Whether Spring itself can replace J2EE has yet to be shown, but it's philosophy will (at least in those companies flexible enough to change).

      J2EE was a good first step, I suppose. They combined all the complex middleware software of the early to mid 90's into one giant all-inclusive spec. Anyone with a couple million man hours could implement the spec and join the market. I guess it made sense at the time.

      Now we have a handful of application servers each costing tens of thousands of dollars (not including two very nice open source implementations). Most companies opt to spend $20k on WSAD just for transaction support, or just so they can use the app server's security. They never stop and ask if they need all the power their buying. Spring (and the light weight containers that are sure to follow) will give people an alternative.

    • Actually, take another look. These tools are a response to that very criticism. They are part of a move towards a more light-weight Java. I've used them both, and they are a dream to use. Hibernate in particular.

      Why is Slashdot so anti-Java?

      • Re:Yeehoo, more tools....... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by tigersha ( 151319 ) on Monday May 17, 2004 @10:02AM (#9172868) Homepage
        Lord knows why Slashdot is so anti Java.

        Even Microsoft copied it with .NET. And while everyone here freaks out about Inferno and so on they tend to forget that Inferno is a VM based system just like Java.

        And so, I might like to add is Perl, in which /. is written. In fact, the Perl people are building a new VM just for the job (Parrot).

        Java does have complexities, but a lot of that is solved in 1.5. The API's are complicated but then, so is the real world. They are also complete. And I really do not think that the few (standardized by Sun) API's are worse than the hordes of modules you get for Perl on CPAN.

        • Re:Yeehoo, more tools....... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by haystor ( 102186 ) on Monday May 17, 2004 @10:22AM (#9173077)
          Java the language has been drawn into the hatred here by its association with other things:

          The billions of dollars of advertising that got managers and HR people to take Java classes because it was the way of the future.

          All the things that don't live up to their billing: AWT, Swing, keep trying.

          Anyone else feel like the "write once run anywhere" philosophy just reduced java to the lowest common denominator of functionality?

          Sun has spent a lot of money promising Java will do a lot of things it hasn't done.

          Then there are all the fanboys of java that drive some of us nuts on a daily basis. Just trying to explain to them that even though Java is compiled, it is still interpreted (in the same fashion as Perl or Python) falls on deaf ears.

          Other languages popular here are popular because they bend to the programmers will. With Java it is the programmer who must bend.

          Java is and has been all about marketing. Marketing isn't well liked here.

          To me, java is like ms-windows. It is usable, but only after you go out and get someone else's add-ons that should have been included in the first place.

          Oh, and I hate java because it isn't LISP.

          • Re:Yeehoo, more tools....... (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward
            Then there are all the fanboys of java that drive some of us nuts on a daily basis. Just trying to explain to them that even though Java is compiled, it is still interpreted (in the same fashion as Perl or Python) falls on deaf ears.

            ... and you are both right and wrong. In the end, much of the code is actually really compiled by a JIT-compiler to machine code. Same can and is done with other VMs. And exactly why do you feel compelled to explain that out to fanboys?

            Other languages popular here are pop

            • I have to explain to Java people what mod_perl does. I usually get blank stares. The general opinion seems to be that Perl is interpreted in the way that Basic was interpreted long ago, line by line. I'm serious, lots of java people think this.

              Java is less programmer friendly that Python, Perl and LISP. It's that simple. Look no further than all the nice things they are putting into 1.5. All things that are in C# apparently that Sun used to say weren't necessary until C# showed up. I promise autobox
          • Then there are the job ads with all kinds of baroque requirements (2 years J2EE 2.5431, Struts 23.skedoo, etc.) At least C++ developers don't get rejected because they've used GCC 3.0 but not 3.01.

            Let me predict that we'll soon see jobs requiring "2 years Spring 2.309 and Hibernate 1.75, and don't bother applying if you haven't worked with those specific versions."
          • The billions of dollars of advertising that got managers and HR people to take Java classes because it was the way of the future.

            Yes, anything thats made by a company and marketed is evil because we're all communist hippies who think all software should be free as in beer.

            All the things that don't live up to their billing: AWT, Swing, keep trying.

            I was never impressed with AWT or Swing, and therefore don't usually use Java for projects requiring a GUI, rather (as I think is most often the case) use Ja
            • I was answering why Java was unpopular here. It may have fixed many of the problems I stated, but it still left bad feelings. A lot was promised and when a lot of people have it crammed down their throat there is ill will.

              You mention yourself that C++ doesn't exactly bend to the programmer's will. This is certrainly true, of course I didn't mention C++ as an example of that (nor will you find it among the most popular languages here on slashdot).

              The languages you find popular here just flat out do what

            • How a programming language bends to someones will is beyond me sorry

              You should try reading about LISP macros. Paul Graham has written mostly about macros; it's available here [paulgraham.com]. To really get it, you require a bit of LISP knowledge, but you can get the general idea of the power of macros just by skimming the introductory parts of some of the later chapters. If you've got the time, I recommend reading through, it's very well written and really shows off what LISP can do for you.

            • Sorry, but you're comparing apples and oranges here. LISP is adheres more to a completely different programming paradigm (functional programming) as opposed to Java/C/C++ and all the other OO languages.

              If you actually believe this, you don't know Lisp very well. While Schemers often emphasize the functional use of their language, Common Lispers move about as they wish in the realms of procedural, object-oriented, and functional programming in order to most easily solve their problems.

              You might ha

  • Is AOP (Aspect-Oriented Programming) simply evidence that OO (Object-Orientation) has some fundamental design problems?

    • Re:aspect-oriented programming (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 17, 2004 @08:36AM (#9172255)
      It is proof that no one paradigm can solve all problems easily. AOP solves some problems easier than OOP, but some prblems it does not.

      AOP has the small problem that it is patented. It was, at the time of creation, genuinly new, so it is only right the the creators should be able to patent it. But doing so has limited the ability of OSS tools to support AOP properly.

      • That, and OOP isn't particularly well-defined. Each language that has OO features likely has a different set of them (I believe there's a "pick 3 of 4" comment that goes with it). Different combinations of OO features, not to speak of additional less-standard features, exist because they behave differently (sometimes more to your liking, sometimes entirely not.) Nominative vs. Structural typing, etc. are big differences. I'm somewhat surprised we call it all "OO" in the first place. That may also contribute
      • AOP has the small problem that it is patented.

        If that is true, then that alone would probably doom it unless it was so clearly better than what came before it that people live with a "patent tax".
    • I'd rather say "AOP (Aspect-Oriented Programming) is simply evidence that an OO language without metaclass support has some fundamental design problems."

      As long as you can say "A class is also an object, so I should be able to define its class to control its behavior any way I want", you can replicate AOP behavior very easily, with much more power too. Smalltalk for example can do everything AspectJ does for Java and so much more. And let's not even get started with Lisp-based OO languages! Having said t

  • ...Spring, and so forth can be found on the frequently offensive but never boring BileBlog [freeroller.net]. An excerpt:
    J3EE is moron bait I've been trying to ignore this nonsense, but frankly, it's just so ridiculous and such a nice big fat juicy target that it's hard to pass up.
    Whew!

  • A lament to Java. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Roman_(ajvvs) ( 722885 ) on Monday May 17, 2004 @12:25PM (#9174219) Journal
    I used to promote Java as "the tool" for development, but after 2 1/2 years of not being able to justify the use of my formerly favourite language in a single commercial project, I can only sigh. The biggest stumbling blocks have been the getting effective tools and the limiting the overhead and complexity of any potential implementation. The current Java SDK's are not intuitive. I loop hopefully to 1.5 and Eclipse for evolution in the right direction, but Java right now feels like a colossal waste of my paid time. It's partly because of things like this (line from the article):

    Unlike EJB CMP CMR and like JDO, Hibernate can work inside of or outside of a J2EE container, which is a boon for those of us doing TDD and agile development.

    Acronym hell. Java used to be pretty easy to understand. There was Swing, there was AWT, there was the language and the development environment was concise. Not all of it was good, but I knew where I stood. Right now I know that 4 of those 6 acronyms aren't relevant to my work as a programmer. And none of them relate to Java as a language. People talk about ATL, STL, MFC and whatnot, but C++ the language has endured as a language independent of its modules. Love it or hate it, it's a language that deserves respect for this endurance. Right now I can't say that for Java. Whatever happened to plain Java?

    Maybe I'm just not getting it, but me "getting it" is what's the deciding factor in my choice of tools, since I have to get it to do my work. I get .NET; there's the language (C#,VB,C++,WinForms, all .NET) and there's the tool (Visual Studio, maybe Mono). I know for a fact I can write code using VS that can compile on linux with the minimum of modification. I also know which modules lock me to windows (VB.NET, Winforms) and which ones don't (maybe C# if Mono succeeds, Strict C++ saves the day for portability). I learnt this from documentation, research and testing by my own hand. I've researched Java, kept informed of it, but all I see now is a concoction of marketing hype and a bad case of constant scope creep. Another quote:

    The starting point is an enterprise application for which you are implementing a transactional persistence layer.

    Overkill! I'm sorry, my customers aren't going to spend the money buying our software when they need to install an entirely new infrastructure to support it. The margins aren't that high in my industry. Besides, why do I need yet another framework? What was wrong with the old one? If the old one was so bad it had to be replaced, why promote it in the first place? I don't care about an implementation of the newest development methodology. I care about development cost, infrastructure, what customers will put up with, and what I can support without costing me a fortune in time, effort and understanding.

    This article showed me nothing that gives me any clue to how useful this is really going to be "in the field". I think I'll just go hibernate until Java springs into action...

    • Re:A lament to Java. (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Whatever happened to plain Java?

      It died like 5 years ago, sorry you didn't get the news. "The Framework" is now J2EE.

      Besides, why do I need yet another framework? What was wrong with the old one?

      A lot of things, starting with cost and complexity. Sure if you've already spent the $100K to rollout WebLogic, this isn't for you. But for smaller projects and non-banks, having something lighter-weight than J2EE would be a godsend. Especially since the basic functionality is "free" with .NET and doesn't req

    • Re:A lament to clue (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tigeba ( 208671 ) on Monday May 17, 2004 @03:00PM (#9175775)
      "Whatever happened to plain Java?"

      We got tired of reinventing the wheel. These API's exist because the solve problems. By not having to deal with these problems, you can focus on your specific business needs.

      Have fun writing everything in C++ (no STL mind you) and no linking to external libraries. Let me know how it goes talking to the database, or parsing that XML file some vendor just sent you.

      I can't tell you how many times someone has said to me "Gee if we just had our own implementation of platform and vendor neutral database connectivity API it would solve a critical business need!".

    • Re:A lament to Java. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bay43270 ( 267213 )
      So you're bitching that Java got too complex, and it's going to collapse under its own weight. You say it should be simpler. THAT'S WHAT SPRING IS ALL ABOUT!

      J2EE is the result of monster corporations fighting over huge unmanageable solutions. The compromise usually involves using *everyone's* solution (example - both session beans and entity beans exist because IBM and Oracle couldn't agree on a strategy for persistence). Spring is simply the open source community's response: Smaller, lighter, pluggable
      • those who stick around (ie. don't switch to .NET) will watch frameworks like Spring rise from its ashes to take its place

        I lost track of the number of frameworks that came up promising "an easier way" to develop X or Y for Java. As much as I'd like to stick around to support something non-MS, which I know could be good if not better, I don't know as yet how long Spring will last.

    • Re:A lament to Java. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Phouk ( 118940 )

      Unlike EJB CMP CMR and like JDO, Hibernate can work inside of or outside of a J2EE container, which is a boon for those of us doing TDD and agile development.

      Acronym hell. Java used to be pretty easy to understand. There was Swing, there was AWT

      I call bullshit, or at least Apples to Oranges! What are you talking about - developing a desktop GUI app? Then there still is Swing, and there is AWT, and not that much has changed.

      Or are you talking about database-backed server applications? For smalle

      • If you are not doing that kind of project, feel free to ignore them

        I'm comparing oranges to oranges. They're comparing apples to apples. I have no interest in apples; that's my point, which I think you missed. Having a whole fruit basket of API's to work with is sweet, but too much sugar gives you diabetes and makes you fat.
        Sorry, got a bit carried away with my metaphor.

        But just because you don't need these projects doesn't mean I don't need them (I do)

        I'm not saying these projects aren't useful to

        • [...] the presentation and integration of these enterprise extensions as a part of the standard language is not beneficial to Java's perceived suitability for everyday programming work.

          None of these projects is part of the standard Java library. JDO is a separate package. Hibernate is an open source library. So is Spring. EJBs are part of the J2EE package (hint: EE = Enterprise Edition), but not of the J2SE package (hint: SE = Standard Edition). Your point being?

          • My point being perception. I get the impression everything development-wise in Java is looking at J2EE. Yes, it's not in the J2SE. But I can't recall the last time I saw J2SE mentioned in any development context. That doesn't mean it hasn't been mentioned, just that it's my impression.

            Specifically, the article starts the discussion at the enterprise level. There are a dozen or so references to J2EE (zero to J2SE), and the example deals specifically with running on an application server. What exactly is the

  • Microsoft ObjectSpaces Initiative? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mosel-saar-ruwer ( 732341 ) on Monday May 17, 2004 @08:41PM (#9179079)
    Does anyone have any experience with Microsoft's new ObjectSpaces persistent object initiative for .NET? Some overview here:
    The ["scientific"] data we're generating is very large, and much more binary/object-ish than ASCII/SQL/RDBM-ish in nature.

    CA/Fujitsu abandoned their Jasmine OO database product, and it looks like Progress is allowing ObjectStore to wither on the vine.

    Oh, AND WE NEED 64-BIT DATABASES AND 64-BIT PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES LIKE YESTERDAY!!! SQL's 32-bit BLOB just doesn't cut the mustard. Hell, the following won't even compile on Java 1.5:

    public class SixtyFourBit
    {
    public static void main (String args[])
    { long theLong = 1;
    theLong <<= 32;
    theLong += 1;
    System.out.println("theLong = " + theLong);

    double [] theDoubleArray = new double[theLong];

    }
    }
    SixtyFourBit.java:11: possible loss of precision
    found : long
    required: int
    Any advice as to 64-bit object-oriented databases would be MOST appreciated.

    Thanks!

    • Hibernate is years ahead of ObjectSpaces. Even some beta .NET ORM's are way ahead of ObjectSpaces. For examples, Thona's Entity Broker is already more robust. ObjectSpaces will only work with SQLServer at first (that's what MS says - they never say when it will work with other DBMS's). Spring is really powerful. It's a little complex at first, but once you understand the concepts behind it, it's really cool to use. Add Tapestry for the web tier and you can easily write powerful web apps that are easy to mai

      • Hibernate is years ahead of ObjectSpaces. Even some beta .NET ORM's are way ahead of ObjectSpaces. For examples, Thona's Entity Broker is already more robust. ObjectSpaces will only work with SQLServer at first (that's what MS says - they never say when it will work with other DBMS's). Spring is really powerful. It's a little complex at first, but once you understand the concepts behind it, it's really cool to use. Add Tapestry for the web tier and you can easily write powerful web apps that are easy to ma
        • it's all java and .NET, but depending on your platform, you can get a 64bit extension... I've seen 64-bit extensions for Java on Solaris, for example.

          data mirroring is not performed by an ORM, because it's not its function or objective. That should be performed by the database.

          security is also a different matter, in Java there are several schemes, like JAAS, but you can also use LDAP or active directory (MS's crappy version of LDAP).

          Veritas is also something that an ORM is not aware of (nor should it be)
  • Hibernate is a first-class citizen in the Spring framework. You get session and transaction support for it, so that by using a couple of spring's hibernate support classes you can write less code, because the interceptors will manage transactions and sessions for you, by means of AOP. There are some really cool Hibernate plugins for Eclipse, which create and update the persistent classes from you HBM map, and can also create DAOs for each persistent class. There is also a Spring plugin for Eclipse, it doesn

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