[teiid-dev] Proposal to further refine the JCA Connectors

[Ramesh Reddy]

I forgot to mention one more big plus going into this mode of dividing
the connector binding is, supporting the "embedded" mode will be now
possible for Teiid.

After this change, essentially a host environment like JBoss AS is
providing

- data sources
- transaction manager
- xa terminator
- Work Manager
- JAAS provider (if authentication facilities are needed)

to Teiid. If any foreign VM can provide these facilities, then Teiid
will be fully operational. Except for the "data sources", which are very
specific to the sources, every other item in the list can be
supplemented with other available technologies.


Thoughts? 

If there are no huge objections, we will soon follow up with
implementation details, JIRAs etc. We would like make these changes for
7.0 M4.

Ramesh..

On Tue, 2010-04-27 at 09:42 -0400, Ramesh Reddy wrote:
> After the 7.0 M3 release, and based some initial user feed back and
> issues we have seen, we would like to propose change in the how the
> Connector are defined.
> 
> Traditionally in Teiid <= 6.2 and in Metamatarix
> 
> Connector Binding = Translation Layer + Source Connection
> 
> With the JCA changes, "Connector Binding" became the JCA Connector.
> However, in the container a Source is defined with a "Data Source",
> especially for relational sources the equation became
> 
> Data Source = Managed Connection = Source Connection
> 
> Connector Binding = Translation Layer + Data Source
> 
> since the "Data Source" is defined with its own connector (i.e. -ds.xml
> file) in the container, to support the "Connector Binding" in container,
> we exposed the "Translation Layer" as another JCA Connector. So, now
> this became
> 
> Connector Binding = JCA Connector + Data Source
> 
> But, 
> 
> JCA Connector = Managed Conection
> Connector Binding = Managed Connection + Managed Connection
> 
> Now, this became an issue to have a managed connection over managed
> connection. Teiid does not *really* need the "Managed Connection" for
> the translation layer, but it *really* needs in the "source connection",
> so we want propose splitting the "Connector Binding" into two
> 
> Translation Layer --> becomes a non-managed connection (not JCA)
> Source Connection --> becomes managed connection (JCA)
> 
> This has some pros and cons
> Pros
> 1) Translation layer would be independent of connection layer
> 2) Since translation layer is independent of the environment changes,
> they are portable and can be included in the VDB to migrate from one
> environment to another.
> 3) Since the Connection layer is independent of Translation layer it
> becomes more general purpose JCA connector, that can be used with other
> applications. With out these changes, this connector was previously only
> to be used with Teiid. This also paves easier way to handle any type JCA
> connector.
> 
> Cons.
> 1) Only JDBC Connector had two distinct configurations to define the
> connector before. Going forward Teiid would need to devide the code in
> all the Connectors between the translation layer and connection layer
> and package as such. One as the regular jar file and as the JCA
> connector.
> 2) Two separate configuration files to define the layers
> 3) Dependent jar management for the translation layer.
> 4)  
> 
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