Schema Capture

This section addresses the following topics:

• Automatic Database Schema Capture

• Using the capture-schema Utility

Automatic Database Schema Capture

You can configure a CMP bean in Application Server to automatically capture the database metadata and save it in a .dbschema file during deployment. If the sun-cmp-mappings.xml file contains an empty <schema/> entry, the cmp-resource entry in the sun-ejb-jar.xml file is used to get a connection to the database, and automatic generation of the schema is performed.

Before capturing the database schema automatically, make sure you have a properly configured CMP resource. See Configuring the CMP Resource.

Using the capture-schema Utility

You can use the capture-schema command to manually generate the database metadata (.dbschema) file. For details, see the Sun Java System Application Server Enterprise Edition 8.2 Reference Manual.

The capture-schema utility does not modify the schema in any way. Its only purpose is to provide the persistence engine with information about the structure of the database (the schema).

Keep the following in mind when using the capture-schema command:

• The name of a .dbschema file must be unique across all deployed modules in a domain.

• If more than one schema is accessible for the schema user, more than one table with the same name might be captured if the -schemaname parameter of capture-schema is not set.

• The schema name must be upper case.

• Table names in databases are case-sensitive. Make sure that the table name matches the name in the database.

• An Oracle database user running the capture-schema command needs ANALYZE ANY TABLE privileges if that user does not own the schema. These privileges are granted to the user by the database administrator.