Java(TM) Boutique - Using CASTOR for DB Access from STRUTS

tutorials : Using CASTOR for DB Access from STRUTS :

Problems with CASTOR?

One should note that the CASTOR framework is not an implementation of SUN JDO specification. CASTOR is, however, one of the very widely used open source or frameworks. I have found it to be very stable. At least I have not found any open source(free) O/R mapping frameworks that are easier to use and more stable than CASTOR as of writing this article.

Some other points to note are some limitations of CASTOR as published here in this article. But the only limitations that really stand out of this article are:

Castor may not have some of the best error messages: This seems to be more of a matter of gaining more experience with the framework.
It may not be the best framework for complex object relationships with multiple level of dependencies: Although I have not verified this, even if this is true, the simplicity and robustness CASTOR provides out weighs this.

One possible solution could be, use CASTOR for its simplicity and get a working code very fast, to start with. As your application grows if you identify any cases where CASTOR is inadequate or inefficient, you can bypass its use only for those cases. Please look at the open stack project for more details and examples of an adapter framework that lets you choose the type of data access framework dynamically. Specifically the project page provides links to architecture document code and API docs, that illustrate this.

Conclusion:

In the last article we used pure JDBC for database access from STRUTS. In this article we used CASTOR JDO for the same. There are a few important points to note:

We used a connection pooled data source with CASTOR and specified the O/R mapping in the mapping.xml file. We demonstrated how this file could be autogenerated.
We discussed use of CASTOR from a STRUTS application.
As mentioned earlier if you ever face a need to use plain JDBC for certain calls , where CASTOR can not provide the required functionality; look at the Adapter example provided at The open stack project page. Browse through the Architecture , Java Doc or sample code

Finally I would like to thank Srinivas Sethuraman of The Open Stack project for providing a starting point for this. You can look at his starting docs for an example of test client, caching and also an example on relationships amongst tables. His docs can be found here.

Harshal Deo has 10 years of experience working with enterprise systems. He has worked with companies like Citicorp & KPMG and currently works for an enterprise software company Asera. Previously he has worked with a valley startup MHP, as a lead Architect, defining the application architecture of its J2EE based system. He has also published a few articles on technology and related areas.

Harshal is also one of the founders of www.theopenstack.com--an online community, simplifying and promoting the use of open source technologies for enterprise application development.

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