to handle that sorting property :). Mine deciding point is more
based on laziness. 4 variables or less to pass? Then I use a Map, anything over that, I use a bean. Not very scientific I know.
John Fereira wrote:
At 09:12 AM 3/19/2005 -0700, Clinton Begin wrote:
This is an inappropriate use of a list. A list is good for objects of the same (or at least similar!) type. In your case the list contains completely different data.
You should use a Map for this, or better yet, a JavaBean.
One might wonder when it's better to use a Map or a JavaBean. I've found that I want to use a Map when I want to pass a parameter that I might not want to put in a bean I'm using. For example, I might have a patrons bean with several fields (patronsid, firstname, lastname, emailaddress). When I query the database for a single row using the bean for the parameter object works fine. However, I might want a list of all patrons which have a specified string in the email address and I want the list sorted by lastname or emailaddress. Since the bean doesn't have a sort order field I would use a Map for the parameter object so that I could use an "ORDER BY #sortorder# " in the map.
John Fereira
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ithaca, NY
-- Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth. - Isaac Newton
