JPA 2.1 Implementation - EclipseLink M6 integrated in GlassFish 4 (TOTD #195)

As TOTD #187 explained, one of the new features in JPA 2.1 is Schema Generation. It refers to generation of database artifacts like tables, indexes, and constraints in a database schema. Read TOTD #187 for more details. This Tip Of TheDay (TOTD) will explain how to use this feature in GlassFish 4.

JPA 2.1 is implemented in EclipseLink and the status shows that a decent progress is made. EclipseLink Milestone builds shows the dates when milestones are released. It typically takes a few days for the milestone to be integrated in GlassFish 4 after the release.

How do you know which milestone is integrated in GlassFish 4 ?

Issue the following commmand in glassfish/modules directory:

unzip -p org.eclipse.persistence.core.jar META-INF/MANIFEST.MF | grep Bundle-Version

to see an output as:

Bundle-Version: 2.5.0.v20130110-d839ca4

If we break the version string then it shows this is version 2.5.0 and dated 20130110 in the format YYYYMMDD, that would be Jan 10, 2013. Based upon the milestone release dates, this indicates M6 is integrated.

I tried this with the latest nightly build (dated Jan 18). By the time you read this blog, a newer version may be integrated and so the version string may look different.

Now lets see this in action!

The sample code explained below can be downloaded here and run on GlassFish 4 1/17 nightly. A promoted build after this nightly should work too.

Create an Entity class as:

@Entity
@Table
@NamedQueries({
 @NamedQuery(name = "Employee.findAll", query = "SELECT e FROM Employee e")
})
public class Employee implements Serializable {
 private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
 @Id
 @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO)
 private int id;

 @Column(length=40)
 private String name;

This is a simple Employee entity that has two fields id and name. A trivial @NamedQuery is defined to retrieve the list of employees.

The associated persistence.xml looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<persistence version="2.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/persistence_2_0.xsd">
<persistence-unit name="MyPU" transaction-type="JTA">
<jta-data-source>jdbc/sample</jta-data-source>
<properties>
<property name="javax.persistence.schema-generation-action" value="drop-and-create"/>
<property name="javax.persistence.schema-generation-target" value="database"/> 
<property name="eclipselink.deploy-on-startup" value="true"/>
</properties>
</persistence-unit>
</persistence>

Other than the usual elements like <persistence-unit> and <jta-data-source>, the newly introduced properties - javax.persistence.schema-generation-action and javax.persistence.schema-generation-target define the action and target for the schema generation. The action is to drop and create the tables. The target defines to perform the action in the database. These properties control the behavior of schema generation and their meaning is defined in TOTD #187. Notice, the third property is EclipseLink specific and is specified to eagerly initialize the Persistence Unit. This will ensure that the schema is generated during the application deployment itself. Otherwise it is generated when the PU is first accessed.

This will generate the table in the database defined by jdbc/sample JDBC resource. This resource is pre-defined for JavaDB that is already bundled with GlassFish 4.

After this, you can write a simple EJB as:

@Stateless
public class EmployeeBean {

 @PersistenceContext
 EntityManager em;

 public void persist(Employee e) {
 em.persist(e);
 }

 public List<Employee> get() {
 return em.createNamedQuery("Employee.findAll", Employee.class).getResultList();
 }
}

And invoke it from a Servlet as:

for (int i=0; i<5; i++) {
 bean.persist(new Employee("Name" + i));
}
for (Employee e : bean.get()) {
 out.println(e.getName() + "<br>");
}

A different set of properties may be specified as:

<properties>
<property name="javax.persistence.schema-generation-action" value="drop-and-create"/>
<property name="javax.persistence.schema-generation-target" value="scripts"/> 
<property name="javax.persistence.ddl-create-script-target" value="createfoo.sql"/> 
<property name="javax.persistence.ddl-drop-script-target" value="dropfoo.sql"/> 
<property name="eclipselink.deploy-on-startup" value="true"/>
<property name="eclipselink.application-location" value="/tmp"/>
</properties>

These properties specify the action as"drop-and-create", i.e. drop and create the tables. The target specifies the the action to be performed in a script. The *.script-target property specifies the name of the files for create and drop DDL. The following scripts are generated:

more /tmp/createfoo.sql 
CREATE TABLE EMPLOYEE (ID INTEGER NOT NULL, NAME VARCHAR(40), PRIMARY KEY (ID))
CREATE TABLE SEQUENCE (SEQ_NAME VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL, SEQ_COUNT DECIMAL(15), PRIMARY KEY (SEQ_NAME))
INSERT INTO SEQUENCE(SEQ_NAME, SEQ_COUNT) values ('SEQ_GEN', 0)
CREATE TABLE SEQUENCE (SEQ_NAME VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL, SEQ_COUNT DECIMAL(15), PRIMARY KEY (SEQ_NAME))
INSERT INTO SEQUENCE(SEQ_NAME, SEQ_COUNT) values ('SEQ_GEN', 0)

more /tmp/dropfoo.sql 
DROP TABLE EMPLOYEE
DELETE FROM SEQUENCE WHERE SEQ_NAME = 'SEQ_GEN'

By default, the scripts are generated in glassfish/domains/domain1 directory. In this case, an EclipseLink-specific property to identify the base location of the generated files is specified.

As TOTD #187 explains, you can bundle DDL and DML scripts to generate and populate the database. Are you ready to test drive JPA 2.1 implemented using EclipseLink 2.5 in GlassFish 4 ?

JPA 2.1 Public Review specification has been available for a few days now. The Appendix A in the specification provide revision history in case you want to focus on the newly added features only.  If you are a JUG member, you may consider adopting this JSR and provide feedback!