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Object-Relation Mapping without the Container

Posted by Hemos on 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."

9 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. Yeehoo, more tools....... by MrIrwin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    After all, Java development environments are well known for thier conciseness and simple nature. Let's throw another couple of tools into the works....

    --

    And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)

    1. Re:Yeehoo, more tools....... by bay43270 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Yeehoo, more tools....... by tigersha · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
    3. Re:Yeehoo, more tools....... by haystor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      t
    4. Re:Yeehoo, more tools....... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful
      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 popular because they bend to the programmers will. With Java it is the programmer who must bend.

      How and why? Why does programmer need to bend more or less than with, say, Perl, Python or Lisp? Lisp has its own extensive runtime environment (even more complete than JVM); and simple yet rather unintuitive syntax. Python has its "whitespace matters" attitude, for people with acquired taste. And perl... oh boy. It's the duct tape of programming; useful, sure, but programmer really has to wrap his or her brains around that beast too.

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

      Java has had its share of hype. But it's NEVER been just hype or marketing. It's a solid platform suitable for many programming tasks. Just because you don't grok it doesn't mean "it's all marketing". In fact, Java is like C in many ways: paving the way for other languages to come; to serve as THE example of a modern programming language.

      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.

      And this is just Plain Stupid. I can understand people who claim Java has all and kitchen sink in its API. But to claim it doesn't have enough is just absurd. Name things you are missing that other languages come equipped with, out of the box; otherwise you just sound like a whiny baby.

      Plus, regarding Windows; as little as I care about that platform (I don't own any Windows-box, don't really need one), it's also patently childish to claim it's not useful without add-ons.

  2. Re:aspect-oriented programming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  3. Why is this insightful? by amarodeeps · · Score: 3, Insightful
    'Transactional' is a buzzword? 'Persistence' is a buzzword? As far as I understand it, those have well-defined meanings within software design methodology. There is a big freaking difference between a persistent object and a non-persistent object. And I think you'll find that 'transactional' can occasionally be used in a technical, practical way. Go figure.

    I mean, what exactly were the buzzwords here? 'Tier?' 'Enterprise?' 'Build?' 'Introduction?' Do tell!

    So, what was +5 insightful about this comment, other than its pandering to a the Slashdot contingent that doesn't bother reading or thinking very hard about the issues at hand?

  4. A lament to Java. by Roman_(ajvvs) · · Score: 3, Interesting
    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...

    --
    click-clack, front and back. I'm not moving this car otherwise.
  5. Re:A lament to clue by tigeba · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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!".