Hi everybody,
Wanted to give heads up on a feature that I we are working on with my (yet
under the radar) colleague [1]. This will be in Jira soon and implementation
should be on the way.
We’ve experimented with automated db-first approach to Cayenne modeling for
more than a year on a set of client projects. Roughly this approach means that
DB evolution is managed via external tools (e.g. liquibase) and Cayenne
artifacts are managed using the following POM configuration:
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.cayenne.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-cayenne-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
...
</configuration>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>default-cli</id>
<goals>
<goal>cdbimport</goal>
<goal>cgen</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
“cdbimport” ensures that Cayenne model is always in sync with DB, “cgen” - that
Java classes are in sync with the model. There are zero problems with “cgen",
not so with “cdbimport". If you control the schema, you get a decently named
Java classes/properties in 95% of the cases. Here we are trying to address the
remaining 5% that make things ugly:
* Inability to generate meaningful relationship names in many cases.
* Inability to customize attribute/relationship names and data types.
To solve this here we are proposing a merge algorithm that would preserve
customizations to the Obj* layer made by the user. And in addition to that a
special descriptor that can be used for more advanced filtering and
customization of cdbimport process. Both of these improvements will hopefully
result in “cdbimport” becoming a tool of choice for Cayenne work for many users.
Comments are welcomed.
Cheers,
Andrus
[1]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DF5-_mMDCuH7iUFhEFDm2q-ebVeSPgvOaymho88ywJ0/edit?pli=1
