THOUGHT
Inc. directly addresses the Data Access needs of the Enterprise
Java Beans (EJB) platform with the CocoBase Enterprise Object to
Relational Mapping Middleware. This provides a key tool for the
Enterprise Application market as it retools to Enterprise Java Beans.
Corporate spending on the EJB solution is expected to be over a
billion dollars in the coming years with heavy increases each year.
The critical nature of these applications requires mature tool-sets
that deliver solutions today with future development to meet tomorrow's
needs.
THOUGHT Inc.'s CocoBase supports EJB
development, today, with it's dynamic repository based Object to
Relational Mapping Tool delivering Container Managed Persistence
and Bean Managed Persistence. Not only is CocoBase the only O/R
tool optimized for EJB, but it is the oldest and most mature O/R
tool available in Java. THOUGHT Inc. delivered the first O/R for
Java, and now it has delivered the first O/R optimized for the J2EE
EJB platform.
The EJB platform is a component
based architecture that allows engineers to share and reuse their
work in a standard and portable way. This means that Enterprise
Java Beans require that data access be done in a standard and portable
way as well. The CocoBase Tool achieves this, as it bridges the
impedance mismatch from an Object Centric Java language to a Non-Object
Centric Relational database structure. The CocoBase Tools allow
the engineer to optimize both the object and relational model for
best performance of the application, instead of tightly binding
the structures the way many entry level O/R solutions do. Because
CocoBase Enterprise O/R utilizes dynamic repository based mapping
it can reduce development, deployment and maintenance time by up
to 80%.
Typical
Problems With Writing EJBs
What are the usual choices available
for delivering data access by developers using Enterprise Java Beans?
There are two typical directions to take;
1) Having the engineer hand code all
of the database access code directly into the Entity Beans with
embedded JDBC and SQL commands, and/or
2) Using a tool that does this for
them such as a built in CMP generator which does not respond to
or manage the myriad of items needed for enterprise level data.
Such as the ability to provide code that can be quickly written,
edited and maintained, that can scale to large numbers of users
and retain high performance at all times.
Neither of those typical solutions
accomplish the task without the aid of an O/R tool such as CocoBase.
The typical hand code scenario means that;
1. Up to 80% of the cost of the EJB application is in hand crafting
database access in the objects.
2. Any changes that need to occur to the objects and data as the
project progresses have to be done by hand, recompiled, regenerated
and re-deployed.
3. Any mistakes to the EJB code or the JDBC driver code can be very
costly with the average EJB objects including several thousand lines
of code.
4. With each EJB hand crafted for the specific database, the ability
to share this EJB with other databases or combinations of databases
is limited and in almost all cases non-existent.
Beyond the immediate costs of labor
and maintenance for hand coded access in EJB's, there is also the
future considerations of scaling and performance of the company's
application once it is deployed. Unfortunately, the object world
of Java, introduces a whole new set of problems to solve in order
to create scalable and high performance systems. The steps required
to optimize an EJB aren't intuitive to many developers, and development
organizations have a lot to gain from the experience of the CocoBase
product's automatically optimized template based code generation.
Hand coding of objects can create many
costly problems for the performance of an application, such as;
1. As the objects become larger with additional attributes, the
pipe through which it must travel has to be larger and the CPU must
be able to handle more interrupts. This means that the more complex
your data, the larger the object, and the more round trips for attribute
I/O. Unless you can afford unlimited upgrades in the size of the
infrastructure, this becomes an expensive problem as more people
try to access the data through the EJB application. CocoBase templates
generate EJBs that have built in optimizations that developers can
take advantage of that reduces network utilization, and improves
overall application performance.
2. The underlying access is a function of the optimization of the
objects themselves. With fat hand coded objects, the performance
tends to decrease due to increased memory usage and other inefficiencies
introduced.
3. The raw fetching of data with JDBC doesn't allow for caching,
look ahead fetching or other optimizations that can radically speed
performance. EJB is simply not a complete Enterprise infrastructure
without CocoBase. CocoBase suits the needs of modern computing by
providing a flexible architecture for corporate data access without
sacrificing the performance, reliability or scalability of resulting
applications.
The CocoBase
Dynamic Repository Based Solution
CocoBase allows the programmer to easily
build their EJB objects from the underlying data source. These objects
can be immediately compiled, deployed onto an EJB Server and used
by a client. In fact, CocoBase writes all of the code for the CMP
& BMP Entity Beans with the additional files necessary for installation
onto the specific targeted EJB Server. This is important to do in
order to reduce the overall cost of deploying enterprise applications.
With CocoBase these objects can be quickly created, changed on the
fly as well as made to scale and perform. This allows programmers
to quickly increase their productivity and to decouple the creation/administration
of Database Maps and EJBs from the programmers who use them. Thus
reducing the need for highly experienced database access engineers
on a project.
CocoBase is able to achieve this time
savings as well as increases in standard EJB performance with it's
Dynamic Repository based Mapping. CocoBase does not put the data
access code (jdbc/sql) in java objects, but instead places the Mapping
information in a repository that can be easily accessed, changed
and used to generate / regenerate the thousand's of lines of code
in an EJB if necessary. This technology is broadly called "Mapping
Middleware." Thought Inc. patented this basic concept and created
a product line around it called CocoBase.
LEGAL
NOTICE
Copyrights
Copyright
2002, THOUGHT Inc., 657 Mission St., San Francisco, CA 94105 USA.
All rights reserved. Copyright in these (any and all contained herein)
documents is owned by THOUGHT Inc. This material is for personal
use only. Republication and re-dissemination, including posting
to news groups, is expressly prohibited without the prior written
consent of THOUGHT Inc. This publication is provided "as is"
without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including,
but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness
for a particular purpose, or non-infringement, to also include any
and all technical inaccuracies or typographical errors.
Patents
CocoBase
is a patented product under patent #5857197.
Trademarks
CocoBase,
THOUGHT Inc., Dynamic O/R Mapping, Dynamic Transparent Persistence
and others are all trademarks of THOUGHT Inc. All other trademarks
are owned by their respective owners.
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