Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Application Development Guide

Chapter 10 Using Container-Managed Persistence

This chapter contains information on how EJB 2.1 container-managed persistence (CMP) works in the Oracle GlassFishTM Server in the following topics:


Note –

The Web Profile of the GlassFish Server supports the EJB 3.1 Lite specification, which allows enterprise beans within web applications, among other features. The full GlassFish Server supports the entire EJB 3.1 specification. For details, see JSR 318.


GlassFish Server Support for CMP

GlassFish Server support for EJB 2.1 CMP beans includes:

CMP Mapping

Implementation for entity beans that use CMP is mostly a matter of mapping CMP fields and CMR fields (relationships) to the database. This section addresses the following topics:

Mapping Capabilities

Mapping refers to the ability to tie an object-based model to a relational model of data, usually the schema of a relational database. The CMP implementation provides the ability to tie a set of interrelated beans containing data and associated behaviors to the schema. This object representation of the database becomes part of the Java application. You can also customize this mapping to optimize these beans for the particular needs of an application. The result is a single data model through which both persistent database information and regular transient program data are accessed.

The mapping capabilities provided by the GlassFish Server include:

The Mapping Deployment Descriptor File

Each module with CMP beans must have the following files:

The sun-cmp-mappings.xml file can be automatically generated and does not have to exist prior to deployment. For details, see Generation Options for CMP.

The sun-cmp-mappings.xml file maps CMP fields and CMR fields (relationships) to the database. A primary table must be selected for each CMP bean, and optionally, multiple secondary tables. CMP fields are mapped to columns in either the primary or secondary table(s). CMR fields are mapped to pairs of column lists (normally, column lists are the lists of columns associated with primary and foreign keys).


Note –

Table names in databases can be case-sensitive. Make sure that the table names in the sun-cmp-mappings.xml file match the names in the database.

Relationships should always be mapped to the primary key field(s) of the related table.


The sun-cmp-mappings.xml file conforms to the sun-cmp-mapping_1_2.dtd file and is packaged with the user-defined bean classes in the EJB JAR file under the META-INF directory.

The GlassFish Server creates the mappings in the sun-cmp-mappings.xml file automatically during deployment if the file is not present.

To map the fields and relationships of your entity beans manually, edit the sun-cmp-mappings.xml deployment descriptor. Only do this if you are proficient in editing XML.

The mapping information is developed in conjunction with the database schema (.dbschema) file, which can be automatically captured when you deploy the bean (see Automatic Database Schema Capture). You can manually generate the schema using the capture-schema utility (Using the capture-schema Utility).

Mapping Considerations

This section addresses the following topics:

The data types used in automatic schema generation are also suggested for manual mapping. These data types are described in Supported Data Types for CMP.

Join Tables and Relationships

Use of join tables in the database schema is supported for all types of relationships, not just many-to-many relationships. For general information about relationships, see section 10.3.7 of the Enterprise JavaBeans Specification, v2.1.

Automatic Primary Key Generation

The GlassFish Server supports automatic primary key generation for EJB 1.1, 2.0, and 2.1 CMP beans. To specify automatic primary key generation, give the prim-key-class element in the ejb-jar.xml file the value java.lang.Object. CMP beans with automatically generated primary keys can participate in relationships with other CMP beans. The GlassFish Server does not support database-generated primary key values.

If the database schema is created during deployment, the GlassFish Server creates the schema with the primary key column, then generates unique values for the primary key column at runtime.

If the database schema is not created during deployment, the primary key column in the mapped table must be of type NUMERIC with a precision of 19 or more, and must not be mapped to any CMP field. The GlassFish Server generates unique values for the primary key column at runtime.

Fixed Length CHAR Primary Keys

If an existing database table has a primary key column in which the values vary in length, but the type is CHAR instead of VARCHAR, the GlassFish Server automatically trims any extra spaces when retrieving primary key values. It is not a good practice to use a fixed length CHAR column as a primary key. Use this feature with schemas that cannot be changed, such as a schema inherited from a legacy application.

Managed Fields

A managed field is a CMP or CMR field that is mapped to the same database column as another CMP or CMR field. CMP fields mapped to the same column and CMR fields mapped to exactly the same column lists always have the same value in memory. For CMR fields that share only a subset of their mapped columns, changes to the columns affect the relationship fields in memory differently. Basically, the GlassFish Server always tries to keep the state of the objects in memory synchronized with the database.

A managed field can have any fetched-with subelement. If the fetched-with subelement is <default/>, the -DAllowManagedFieldsInDefaultFetchGroup flag must be set to true. See Default Fetch Group Flags and fetched-with in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Application Deployment Guide.

BLOB Support

Binary Large Object (BLOB) is a data type used to store values that do not correspond to other types such as numbers, strings, or dates. Java fields whose types implement java.io.Serializable or are represented as byte[] can be stored as BLOBs.

If a CMP field is defined as Serializable, it is serialized into a byte[] before being stored in the database. Similarly, the value fetched from the database is deserialized. However, if a CMP field is defined as byte[], it is stored directly instead of being serialized and deserialized when stored and fetched, respectively.

To enable BLOB support in the GlassFish Server environment, define a CMP field of type byte[] or a user-defined type that implements the java.io.Serializable interface. If you map the CMP bean to an existing database schema, map the field to a column of type BLOB.

To use BLOB or CLOB data types larger than 4 KB for CMP using the Inet Oraxo JDBC Driver for Oracle Databases, you must set the streamstolob property value to true.

For a list of the JDBC drivers currently supported by the GlassFish Server, see the Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Release Notes. For configurations of supported and other drivers, see Configuration Specifics for JDBC Drivers in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Administration Guide.

For automatic mapping, you might need to change the default BLOB column length for the generated schema using the schema-generator-properties element in sun-ejb-jar.xml. See your database vendor documentation to determine whether you need to specify the length. For example:

<schema-generator-properties>
   <property>
      <name>Employee.voiceGreeting.jdbc-type</name>
      <value>BLOB</value>
   </property>
   <property>
      <name>Employee.voiceGreeting.jdbc-maximum-length</name>
      <value>10240</value>
   </property>
   ...
</schema-generator-properties>

CLOB Support

Character Large Object (CLOB) is a data type used to store and retrieve very long text fields. CLOBs translate into long strings.

To enable CLOB support in the GlassFish Server environment, define a CMP field of type java.lang.String. If you map the CMP bean to an existing database schema, map the field to a column of type CLOB.

To use BLOB or CLOB data types larger than 4 KB for CMP using the Inet Oraxo JDBC Driver for Oracle Databases, you must set the streamstolob property value to true.

For a list of the JDBC drivers currently supported by the GlassFish Server, see the Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Release Notes. For configurations of supported and other drivers, see Configuration Specifics for JDBC Drivers in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Administration Guide.

For automatic mapping, you might need to change the default CLOB column length for the generated schema using the schema-generator-properties element in sun-ejb-jar.xml. See your database vendor documentation to determine whether you need to specify the length. For example:

<schema-generator-properties>
   <property>
      <name>Employee.resume.jdbc-type</name>
      <value>CLOB</value>
   </property>
   <property>
      <name>Employee.resume.jdbc-maximum-length</name>
      <value>10240</value>
   </property>
   ...
</schema-generator-properties>

Automatic Schema Generation for CMP

The automatic schema generation feature provided in the GlassFish Server defines database tables based on the fields in entity beans and the relationships between the fields. This insulates developers from many of the database related aspects of development, allowing them to focus on entity bean development. The resulting schema is usable as-is or can be given to a database administrator for tuning with respect to performance, security, and so on.

This section addresses the following topics:


Note –

Automatic schema generation is supported on an all-or-none basis: it expects that no tables exist in the database before it is executed. It is not intended to be used as a tool to generate extra tables or constraints.

Deployment won't fail if all tables are not created, and undeployment won't fail if not all tables are dropped. This is done to allow you to investigate the problem and fix it manually. You should not rely on the partially created database schema to be correct for running the application.


Supported Data Types for CMP

CMP supports a set of JDBC data types that are used in mapping Java data fields to SQL types. Supported JDBC data types are as follows: BIGINT, BIT, BLOB, CHAR, CLOB, DATE, DECIMAL, DOUBLE, FLOAT, INTEGER, NUMERIC, REAL, SMALLINT, TIME, TIMESTAMP, TINYINT, VARCHAR.

The following table contains the mappings of Java types to JDBC types when automatic mapping is used.

Table 10–1 Java Type to JDBC Type Mappings for CMP

Java Type 

JDBC Type 

Nullability 

boolean

BIT

No 

java.lang.Boolean

BIT

Yes 

byte

TINYINT

No 

java.lang.Byte

TINYINT

Yes 

double

DOUBLE

No 

java.lang.Double

DOUBLE

Yes 

float

REAL

No 

java.lang.Float

REAL

Yes 

int

INTEGER

No 

java.lang.Integer

INTEGER

Yes 

long

BIGINT

No 

java.lang.Long

BIGINT

Yes 

short

SMALLINT

No 

java.lang.Short

SMALLINT

Yes 

java.math.BigDecimal

DECIMAL

Yes 

java.math.BigInteger

DECIMAL

Yes 

char

CHAR

No 

java.lang.Character

CHAR

Yes 

java.lang.String

VARCHAR or CLOB

Yes 

Serializable

BLOB

Yes 

byte[]

BLOB

Yes 

java.util.Date

DATE (Oracle only)

TIMESTAMP (all other databases)

Yes 

java.sql.Date

DATE

Yes 

java.sql.Time

TIME

Yes 

java.sql.Timestamp

TIMESTAMP

Yes 


Note –

Java types assigned to CMP fields must be restricted to Java primitive types, Java Serializable types, java.util.Date, java.sql.Date, java.sql.Time, or java.sql.Timestamp. An entity bean local interface type (or a collection of such) can be the type of a CMR field.


The following table contains the mappings of JDBC types to database vendor-specific types when automatic mapping is used. For a list of the JDBC drivers currently supported by the GlassFish Server, see the Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Release Notes. For configurations of supported and other drivers, see Configuration Specifics for JDBC Drivers in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Administration Guide.

Table 10–2 Mappings of JDBC Types to Database Vendor Specific Types for CMP

JDBC Type 

Java DB, Derby, CloudScape 

Oracle  

DB2 

Sybase ASE 12.5 

MS-SQL Server 

BIT

SMALLINT

SMALLINT

SMALLINT

TINYINT

BIT

TINYINT

SMALLINT

SMALLINT

SMALLINT

TINYINT

TINYINT

SMALLINT

SMALLINT

SMALLINT

SMALLINT

SMALLINT

SMALLINT

INTEGER

INTEGER

INTEGER

INTEGER

INTEGER

INTEGER

BIGINT

BIGINT

NUMBER

BIGINT

NUMERIC

NUMERIC

REAL

REAL

REAL

FLOAT

FLOAT

REAL

DOUBLE

DOUBLE PRECISION

DOUBLE PRECISION

DOUBLE

DOUBLE PRECISION

FLOAT

DECIMAL(p,s)

DECIMAL(p,s)

NUMBER(p,s)

DECIMAL(p,s)

DECIMAL(p,s)

DECIMAL(p,s)

VARCHAR

VARCHAR

VARCHAR2

VARCHAR

VARCHAR

VARCHAR

DATE

DATE

DATE

DATE

DATETIME

DATETIME

TIME

TIME

DATE

TIME

DATETIME

DATETIME

TIMESTAMP

TIMESTAMP

TIMESTAMP(9)

TIMESTAMP

DATETIME

DATETIME

BLOB

BLOB

BLOB

BLOB

IMAGE

IMAGE

CLOB

CLOB

CLOB

CLOB

TEXT

NTEXT

Generation Options for CMP

Deployment descriptor elements or asadmin command line options can control automatic schema generation by the following:


Note –

Before using these options, make sure you have a properly configured CMP resource. See Configuring the CMP Resource.

For a read-only bean, do not create the database schema during deployment. Instead, work with your database administrator to populate the data into the tables. See Using Read-Only Beans.

Automatic schema generation is not supported for beans with version column consistency checking. Instead, work with your database administrator to create the schema and add the required triggers. See Version Column Consistency Checking.


The following optional data subelements of the cmp-resource element in the sun-ejb-jar.xml file control the automatic creation of database tables at deployment. For more information about the cmp-resource element, see cmp-resource in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Application Deployment Guide and Configuring the CMP Resource.

Table 10–3 The sun-ejb-jar.xml Generation Elements

Element 

Default 

Description 

create-tables-at-deploy

false

If true, causes database tables to be created for beans that are automatically mapped by the EJB container. If false, does not create tables.

drop-tables-at-undeploy

false

If true, causes database tables that were automatically created when the bean(s) were last deployed to be dropped when the bean(s) are undeployed. If false, does not drop tables.

database-vendor-name

none 

Specifies the name of the database vendor for which tables are created. Allowed values are javadb, db2, mssql, mysql, oracle, postgresql, pointbase, derby (also for CloudScape), and sybase, case-insensitive.

If no value is specified, a connection is made to the resource specified by the jndi-name subelement of the cmp-resource element in the sun-ejb-jar.xml file, and the database vendor name is read. If the connection cannot be established, or if the value is not recognized, SQL-92 compliance is presumed.

schema-generator-properties

none 

Specifies field-specific column attributes in property subelements. Each property name is of the following format:

bean-name.field-name.attribute

For example: 

Employee.firstName.jdbc-type

Also allows you to set the use-unique-table-names property. If true, this property specifies that generated table names are unique within each GlassFish Server domain. The default is false.

For further information and an example, see schema-generator-properties in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Application Deployment Guide.

The following options of the asadmin deploy or asadmin deploydir command control the automatic creation of database tables at deployment.

Table 10–4 The asadmin deploy and asadmin deploydir Generation Options for CMP

Option 

Default 

Description 

----createtables

none 

If true, causes database tables to be created for beans that need them. If false, does not create tables. If not specified, the value of the create-tables-at-deploy attribute in sun-ejb-jar.xml is used.

----dropandcreatetables

none 

If true, and if tables were automatically created when this application was last deployed, tables from the earlier deployment are dropped and fresh ones are created.

If true, and if tables were not automatically created when this application was last deployed, no attempt is made to drop any tables. If tables with the same names as those that would have been automatically created are found, the deployment proceeds, but a warning indicates that tables could not be created.

If false, settings of create-tables-at-deploy or drop-tables-at-undeploy in the sun-ejb-jar.xml file are overridden.

----uniquetablenames

none 

If true, specifies that table names are unique within each GlassFish Server domain. If not specified, the value of the use-unique-table-names property in sun-ejb-jar.xml is used.

----dbvendorname

none 

Specifies the name of the database vendor for which tables are created. Allowed values are javadb, db2, mssql, oracle, postgresql, pointbase, derby (also for CloudScape), and sybase, case-insensitive.

If not specified, the value of the database-vendor-name attribute in sun-ejb-jar.xml is used.

If no value is specified, a connection is made to the resource specified by the jndi-name subelement of the cmp-resource element in the sun-ejb-jar.xml file, and the database vendor name is read. If the connection cannot be established, or if the value is not recognized, SQL-92 compliance is presumed.

If one or more of the beans in the module are manually mapped and you use any of the asadmin deploy or asadmin deploydir options, the deployment is not harmed in any way, but the options have no effect, and a warning is written to the server log.

The following options of the asadmin undeploy command control the automatic removal of database tables at undeployment.

Table 10–5 The asadmin undeploy Generation Options for CMP

Option 

Default 

Description 

----droptables

none 

If true, causes database tables that were automatically created when the bean(s) were last deployed to be dropped when the bean(s) are undeployed. If false, does not drop tables.

If not specified, the value of the drop-tables-at-undeploy attribute in sun-ejb-jar.xml is used.

For more information about the asadmin deploy, asadmin deploydir, and asadmin undeploy commands, see the Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Reference Manual.

When command line and sun-ejb-jar.xml options are both specified, the asadmin options take precedence.

The Ant tasks sun-appserv-deploy and sun-appserv-undeploy are equivalent to asadmin deploy and asadmin undeploy, respectively. These Ant tasks also override the sun-ejb-jar.xml options. For details, see Chapter 3, Using Ant with GlassFishTM Server.

Schema Capture

This section addresses the following topics:

Automatic Database Schema Capture

You can configure a CMP bean in GlassFish 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.


Note –

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 Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 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:

Configuring the CMP Resource

An EJB module that contains CMP beans requires the JNDI name of a JDBC resource in the jndi-name subelement of the cmp-resource element in the sun-ejb-jar.xml file. Set PersistenceManagerFactory properties as properties of the cmp-resource element in the sun-ejb-jar.xml file. See cmp-resource in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Application Deployment Guide.

In the Administration Console, open the Resources component, then select JDBC. Click the Help button in the Administration Console for information on creating a new JDBC resource.

For a list of the JDBC drivers currently supported by the GlassFish Server, see the Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Release Notes. For configurations of supported and other drivers, see Configuration Specifics for JDBC Drivers in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Administration Guide.

For example, if the JDBC resource has the JNDI name jdbc/MyDatabase, set the CMP resource in the sun-ejb-jar.xml file as follows:

<cmp-resource>
   <jndi-name>jdbc/MyDatabase</jndi-name>
</cmp-resource>

Performance-Related Features

The GlassFish Server provides the following features to enhance performance or allow more fine-grained data checking. These features are supported only for entity beans with container managed persistence.


Note –

Use of any of these features results in a non-portable application.


Version Column Consistency Checking

The version consistency feature saves the bean state at first transactional access and caches it between transactions. The state is copied from the cache instead of being read from the database. The bean state is verified by primary key and version column values at flush for custom queries (for dirty instances only) and at commit (for clean and dirty instances).

ProcedureTo Use Version Consistency

  1. Create the version column in the primary table.

  2. Give the version column a numeric data type.

  3. Provide appropriate update triggers on the version column.

    These triggers must increment the version column on each update of the specified row.

  4. Specify the version column.

    This is specified in the check-version-of-accessed-instances subelement of the consistency element in the sun-cmp-mappings.xml file. See consistency in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Application Deployment Guide.

  5. Map the CMP bean to an existing schema.

    Automatic schema generation is not supported for beans with version column consistency checking. Instead, work with your database administrator to create the schema and add the required triggers.

Relationship Prefetching

In many cases when an entity bean’s state is fetched from the database, its relationship fields are always accessed in the same transaction. Relationship prefetching saves database round trips by fetching data for an entity bean and those beans referenced by its CMR fields in a single database round trip.

To enable relationship prefetching for a CMR field, use the default subelement of the fetched-with element in the sun-cmp-mappings.xml file. By default, these CMR fields are prefetched whenever findByPrimaryKey or a custom finder is executed for the entity, or when the entity is navigated to from a relationship. (Recursive prefetching is not supported, because it does not usually enhance performance.) See fetched-with in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Application Deployment Guide.

To disable prefetching for specific custom finders, use the prefetch-disabled element in the sun-ejb-jar.xml file. See prefetch-disabled in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Application Deployment Guide.

Multilevel relationship prefetching is supported for CMP 2.1 entity beans. To enable multilevel relationship prefetching, set the following property using the asadmin create-jvm-options command:


asadmin create-jvm-options -Dcom.sun.jdo.spi.persistence.support.sqlstore.MULTILEVEL_PREFETCH=true

Read-Only Beans

Another feature that the GlassFish Server provides is the read-only bean, an entity bean that is never modified by an EJB client. Read-only beans avoid database updates completely.


Note –

Read-only beans are specific to the GlassFish Server and are not part of the Enterprise JavaBeans Specification, v2.1. Use of this feature for an EJB 2.1 bean results in a non-portable application.


A read-only bean can be used to cache a database entry that is frequently accessed but rarely updated (externally by other beans). When the data that is cached by a read-only bean is updated by another bean, the read-only bean can be notified to refresh its cached data.

The GlassFish Server provides a number of ways by which a read-only bean’s state can be refreshed. By setting the refresh-period-in-seconds element in the sun-ejb-jar.xml file and the trans-attribute element (or @TransactionAttribute annotation) in the ejb-jar.xml file, it is easy to configure a read-only bean that is one of the following:

Access to CMR fields of read-only beans is not supported. Deployment will succeed, but an exception will be thrown at runtime if a get or set method is invoked.

Read-only beans are best suited for situations where the underlying data never changes, or changes infrequently. For further information and usage guidelines, see Using Read-Only Beans.

Default Fetch Group Flags

Using the following flags can improve performance.

Setting -DAllowManagedFieldsInDefaultFetchGroup=true allows CMP fields that by default cannot be placed into the default fetch group to be loaded along with all other fields that are fetched when the CMP state is loaded into memory. These could be multiple fields mapped to the same column in the database table, for example, an instance field and a CMR. By default this flag is set to false.

For additional information, see level in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Application Deployment Guide.

Setting -DAllowMediatedWriteInDefaultFetchGroup specifies how updated CMP fields are written back to the database. If the flag is false, all fields in the CMP bean are written back to the database if at least one field in the default fetch group has been changed in a transaction. If the flag is true, only fields modified by the bean are written back to the database. Specifying true can improve performance, particularly on database tables with many columns that have not been updated. By default this flag is set to false.

To set one of these flags, use the asadmin create-jvm-options command. For example:


asadmin create-jvm-options -DAllowManagedFieldsInDefaultFetchGroup=true

Configuring Queries for 1.1 Finders

This section contains the following topics:

About JDOQL Queries

The Enterprise JavaBeans Specification, v1.1 does not specify the format of the finder method description. The GlassFish Server uses an extension of Java Data Objects Query Language (JDOQL) queries to implement finder and selector methods. You can specify the following elements of the underlying JDOQL query:

The GlassFish Server specific deployment descriptor (sun-ejb-jar.xml) provides the following elements to store the EJB 1.1 finder method settings:

query-filter
query-params
query-variables
query-ordering

The bean developer uses these elements to construct a query. When the finder method that uses these elements executes, the values of these elements are used to execute a query in the database. The objects from the JDOQL query result set are converted into primary key instances to be returned by the EJB 1.1 ejbFind method.

The JDO specification, JSR 12, provides a comprehensive description of JDOQL. The following information summarizes the elements used to define EJB 1.1 finders.

Query Filter Expression

The filter expression is a String containing a Boolean expression evaluated for each instance of the candidate class. If the filter is not specified, it defaults to true. Rules for constructing valid expressions follow the Java language, with the following differences:


Note –

Comparisons between floating point values are by nature inexact. Therefore, equality comparisons (== and !=) with floating point values should be used with caution. Identifiers in the expression are considered to be in the name space of the candidate class, with the addition of declared parameters and variables. As in the Java language, this is a reserved word, and refers to the current instance being evaluated.


The following expressions are supported.

The rules for promotion follow the Java rules extended by BigDecimal, BigInteger, and numeric wrapper classes. See the numeric promotions of the Java language specification.

Query Parameters

The parameter declaration is a String containing one or more parameter type declarations separated by commas. This follows the Java syntax for method signatures.

Query Variables

The type declarations follow the Java syntax for local variable declarations.

JDOQL Examples

This section provides a few query examples.

Example 1

The following query returns all players called Michael. It defines a filter that compares the name field with a string literal:

name == "Michael"

The finder element of the sun-ejb-jar.xml file looks like this:

<finder>
   <method-name>findPlayerByName</method-name>
   <query-filter>name == "Michael"</query-filter>
</finder>

Example 2

This query returns all products in a specified price range. It defines two query parameters which are the lower and upper bound for the price: double low, double high. The filter compares the query parameters with the price field:

low < price && price < high

Query ordering is set to price ascending.

The finder element of the sun-ejb-jar.xml file looks like this:

<finder>
   <method-name>findInRange</method-name>
   <query-params>double low, double high</query-params>
   <query-filter>low &lt; price &amp;&amp; price &lt high</query-filter>
   <query-ordering>price ascending</query-ordering>
</finder>

Example 3

This query returns all players having a higher salary than the player with the specified name. It defines a query parameter for the name java.lang.String name. Furthermore, it defines a variable to which the player’s salary is compared. It has the type of the persistence capable class that corresponds to the bean:

    mypackage.PlayerEJB_170160966_JDOState player

The filter compares the salary of the current player denoted by the this keyword with the salary of the player with the specified name:

    (this.salary > player.salary) && (player.name == name)

The finder element of the sun-ejb-jar.xml file looks like this:

<finder>
   <method-name>findByHigherSalary</method-name>
   <query-params>java.lang.String name</query-params>
   <query-filter>
      (this.salary &gt; player.salary) &amp;&amp; (player.name == name)
   </query-filter>
   <query-variables>
      mypackage.PlayerEJB_170160966_JDOState player
   </query-variables>
</finder>

CMP Restrictions and Optimizations

This section discusses restrictions and performance optimizations that pertain to using CMP.

Disabling ORDER BY Validation

EJB QL as defined in the EJB 2.1 Specification defines certain restrictions for the SELECT clause of an ORDER BY query (see section 11.2.8 ORDER BY Clause). This ensures that a query does not order by a field that is not returned by the query. By default, the EJB QL compiler checks the above restriction and throws an exception if the query does not conform.

However, some databases support SQL statements with an ORDER BY column that is not included in the SELECT clause. To disable the validation of the ORDER BY clause against the SELECT clause, set the DISABLE_ORDERBY_VALIDATION JVM option as follows:

asadmin create-jvm-options 
-Dcom.sun.jdo.spi.persistence.support.ejb.ejbqlc.DISABLE_ORDERBY_VALIDATION=true

The DISABLE_ORDERBY_VALIDATION option is set to false by default. Setting it to true results in a non-portable module or application.

Setting the Heap Size on DB2

On DB2, the database configuration parameter APPLHEAPSZ determines the heap size. If you are using the Oracle or DataDirect database driver, set this parameter to at least 2048 for CMP. For more information, see http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/db2luw/v8/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.db2.udb.doc/opt/tsbp2024.htm.

Eager Loading of Field State

By default, the EJB container loads the state for all persistent fields (excluding relationship, BLOB, and CLOB fields) before invoking the ejbLoad method of the abstract bean. This approach might not be optimal for entity objects with large state if most business methods require access to only parts of the state.

Use the fetched-with element in sun-cmp-mappings.xml for fields that are used infrequently. See fetched-with in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Application Deployment Guide.

Restrictions on Remote Interfaces

The following restrictions apply to the remote interface of an EJB 2.1 bean that uses CMP:

Dependent value classes can be exposed in the remote interface or remote home interface, and can be included in the client EJB JAR file.

PostgreSQL Case Insensitivity

Case-sensitive behavior cannot be achieved for PostgreSQL databases. PostgreSQL databases internally convert all names to lower case, which makes the following workarounds necessary:

No Support for lock-when-loaded on Sybase

For EJB 2.1 beans, the lock-when-loaded consistency level is implemented by placing update locks on the data corresponding to a bean when the data is loaded from the database. There is no suitable mechanism available on Sybase databases to implement this feature. Therefore, the lock-when-loaded consistency level is not supported on Sybase databases. See consistency in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Application Deployment Guide.

Sybase Finder Limitation

If a finder method with an input greater than 255 characters is executed and the primary key column is mapped to a VARCHAR column, Sybase attempts to convert type VARCHAR to type TEXT and generates the following error:

com.sybase.jdbc2.jdbc.SybSQLException: Implicit conversion from datatype 
'TEXT' to 'VARCHAR' is not allowed.  Use the CONVERT function to run this 
query.

To avoid this error, make sure the finder method input is less than 255 characters.

Date and Time Fields

If a field type is a Java date or time type (java.util.Date, java.sql.Date, java.sql.Time, java.sql.Timestamp), make sure that the field value exactly matches the value in the database.

For example, the following code uses a java.sql.Date type as a primary key field:

java.sql.Date myDate = new java.sql.Date(System.currentTimeMillis())
BeanA.create(myDate, ...);

For some databases, this code results in only the year, month, and date portion of the field value being stored in the database. Later if the client tries to find this bean by primary key as follows, the bean is not found in the database because the value does not match the one that is stored in the database.

myBean = BeanA.findByPrimaryKey(myDate);

Similar problems can happen if the database truncates the timestamp value while storing it, or if a custom query has a date or time value comparison in its WHERE clause.

For automatic mapping to an Oracle database, fields of type java.util.Date, java.sql.Date, and java.sql.Time are mapped to Oracle’s DATE data type. Fields of type java.sql.Timestamp are mapped to Oracle’s TIMESTAMP(9) data type.

Set RECURSIVE_TRIGGERS to false on MSSQL

For version consistency triggers on MSSQL, the property RECURSIVE_TRIGGERS must be set to false, which is the default. If set to true, triggers throw a java.sql.SQLException.

Set this property as follows:

EXEC sp_dboption 'database-name', 'recursive triggers', 'FALSE'
go

You can test this property as follows:

SELECT DATABASEPROPERTYEX('database-name', 'IsRecursiveTriggersEnabled')
go

MySQL Database Restrictions

The following restrictions apply when you use a MySQL database with the GlassFish Server for persistence.