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Automate Data Persistence with Firestorm/DAO
by Benoy Jose
FireStorm/DAO is a Java code generator that takes a database schema as input and produces a database access layer as the output. The tool automates the repetitive task of creating DAO objects and the associated helper classes required for data persistence. This greatly reduces development time and can help you focus on business logic implementation. Firestorm generates DAO code for a variety of databases like Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, Sybase, and DB2. Unlike other generators that generate code and expose interfaces to the user, Firestorm generates DAO code very similar to what a developer would have normally written. This makes the code readable and allows you to modify the generated code if required. Firestorm also generates documentation for the generated DAO classes based on the documentation in the database tables.
In addition to generating the data access tier, FireStorm can also generate a presentation layer code based on plain JSP or the Struts framework. You can configure it to generate a Web application complete with JSPs, value objects, persistence objects, deployment descriptors, and other configuration files. The resulting Web app can be deployed on most J2EE complaint application servers with little or no modification.
Features
- Supports multiple persistence technologies like JDBC, Java Data objects (JDO), EJB, and Hibernate
- Can generate code from any ANSI-SQL complaint (Database Definition language) DDL scripts
- Ability to generate DAO for tables, views, and, in some databases, stored procedures and sequences
- Can expose DAO as stateless session beans
- Create DAO from dynamic SQL queries
- Can generate DAO objects, DAO factory objects, exception classes, and data transfer objects
- Support for Log4j
- Supports the ANT build process and can generate the ANT script if needed
- Generates container-managed entity beans with primary key classes
- Generates a complete, struts-based Web application, ready for deployment
- Generates deployment descriptors and other configuration files required for most J2EE complaint application servers
- Ability to create customized DAO generators
- Supports the generation or other Java objects like value objects, view objects, helper classes, etc.
Product Flavors
Firestorm is shipped in three flavors: Enterprise, Architect, and OEM. The Enterprise Edition is an out-of-the-box code generator that generates DAO objects from standard code generation templates. It also generatse a struts-based, Web application that can be deployed on any application server. The Enterprise Edition is for developers who only need to generate code for the database and presentation layers. If you need custom generation capabilities, then the Architect edition is for you. The Enterprise edition sells at $595.00 per developer seat.
The Architect edition allows greater control over the code generation process by allowing you to customize the content of the generated code. You can modify the existing templates used for code generation in the Enterprise edition to suit a particular project's requirement. Unlike other code generation templates that are written in some proprietary language, the templates in Firestorm are written in Java and are easy to customize. The Architect edition has all the features of the Enterprise edition and adds more code generation capabilities. Apart from generating DAO code, you can also use the Architect edition to generate other Java code like value objects, view beans, etc. The Architect edition costs about $3500.00 for a single developer license.
The OEM edition is intended for software vendors who wish to include code generation capabilities in their products. Typical vendors would be IDE builders who can seamlessly integrate Firestorm's code generation capabilities into their products with very little effort. This edition includes documentation on the internal working of the code generator and other aspects of Firestorm that are otherwise not available to regular users.
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