Level: Introductory

Ted Neward (ted@tedneward.com), Principal, Neward & Associates

11 Dec 2007

Java™ developers can get a lot of mileage out of storing objects directly in an object-oriented database like db4o. Without support for transactions or the ability to use data in a distributed environment (and keep it secure), however, you probably won't have much use for the OODBMS. In this final installment in The busy Java developer's guide to db4o, Ted Neward shows you how db4o handles three concerns central to Java enterprise development: transactions, distributed data management, and Web application security.

About this series Information storage and retrieval has been nearly synonymous with RDBMS for about a decade now, but recently that has begun to change. Java developers in particular are frustrated with the so-called object-relational impedance mismatch, and impatient with the solutions that attempt to resolve it. This, along with the emergence of a viable alternative, has led to a renaissance of interest in object persistence and retrieval. The busy Java developer's guide to db4o introduces db4o, an open source database that leverages today's object-oriented languages, systems, and mindset. See the db4o home page to download db4o now; you'll need it to follow the examples.

In this series, I have introduced the essentials of object-oriented data management with db4o. One thing I haven't done, however, is to address how the OODBMS might be used in a Web application and how that might differ from its use in a Swing or SWT application. You could say that I've ignored a whole range of issues that the practicing Java (or .NET) developer cannot afford to ignore.

In part, I've wanted to focus on what is most compelling about the OODBMS, which is object-oriented data storage, manipulation, and retrieval. Also, OODBMS vendors tend to implement core features like transaction management and security similarly to how they're handled by various RDBMSs, with a similarly wide range of options.

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Original link: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-db4o7.html?S_TACT=105AGX54&S_CMP=A1214&ca=dnw-848