Hello,
I took a look at the new meta-model proposed by Steve; in case anybody hasn't seen it
it's here:
http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/hibernate/sandbox/trunk/new-metadata/
If I correctly understood Steve and the code, the model builds on the JPA2 meta-model. In
the proposition there are three levels of meta-data:
1) database
2) mapping
3) java
However as Steve mentioned on IRC, there is a problem with alternate entity modes (today
these are "map" and "xml").
(For me they are very useful, as Envers uses the "map" entity mode to
dynamically generate the audit entities.)
Don't you think that an "entity" meta-data level would be useful?
The basic layers would then be:
1) database - information about tables, columns, foreign keys, indexes
2) mapping - binding between levels 1 and 3, that is, assignment from properties to
columns, from entities to tables etc
3) entity - information about entity names, property names, property types (a property can
be a simple value, many-to-one, one-to-many, (...) relation, a component etc). For
example, a many-to-many relation property would have no idea that it's mapped using a
join table.
Now there could be several layers that build on that. Each such layer would have to
specify what is an entity and what is a property; how to get/set a property from an
entity; how to read other meta-data (from annotations? or from xml?)
4a) java - an entity is a class; holds information if properties are accessed using fields
or getters/setters
4b) map - an entity is a map; properties accessed using Map.get()
4c) xml
In the longer run, maybe Hibernate could become more of a "persistence engine".
That is, it would provide a nice entity abstraction of a database (so abstracting level 1
using level 3 as the access point).
It would play nicely with another project that I have in mind, namely an ORM for Scala
that would use Hibernate. Only a new entity mode (level 4) would have to be written, which
would be a translation from Scala constructs to entities, properties, relations. (Maybe
that would even be something that Bob could use in TorqueBox.)
What do you think?
--
Merry Christmas! :)
Adam