subject: Java and Object databases [print this page] Java and Object databases Java and Object databases
An object database is a database model in which information is represented in the form of objects as used in object-oriented programming. They are completely in line with modern object oriented languages like Java. Although relational databases dominate today, there is a very high chance of shifting the market balance in favour of Object databases in future.
Object-relational mapping (ORM, O/RM, and O/R mapping) is a programming technique for converting data between incompatible systems of relational database and object-oriented programming languages. This creates, in effect, a "virtual object database" that can be used from within the programming language.The Java Persistence API, sometimes referred to as JPA, is such a Java programming language framework managing object relational mapping.
There is a complete article which demonstrates use of object databases in Java Programming using JPA. This uses ObjectDB as the object database and NetBeans as the java development environment. It will give a basic idea about the capabilities of Object databases.
I have been developing Java applications for a long time and the major difficulty was the coding part related to database manipulations. Recently I shifted to use Object-Relational Mapping through JPA. I have usedTopLink,EclipseLink, andHibernate. Although I could achieve the functionally I want with ease, the output was slower when compared to normal method of database connection with JDBC. Then I used some Object databases likeneoDatis. They were quite faster, yet I was reluctant to proceed as most of them had their own standards and did not comply with JPA. Finally I found theObjectDB, an Object database for Java which completely supports JPA.
This article demonstrates how to create a simple JAVA Standard application in NetBeans using ObjectDB and JPA. The demonstrated application uses JPA to store and retrieve objects of two entity classes from an Embedded ObjectDB. It will demonstrate the capabilities of ObjectDB and JPA, which include persisting objects, removing saved objects and retrieving persisted objects. For this tutorial, besides theJava JDK and theNetBeans IDE, you only need todownload and extract theObjectDB distribution zip file. The distribution zip contains everything necessary without any external dependency.
