Hi everyone, Three fairly significant things happened to kick 2007 off with a bang for iBATIS. I thought they were significant enough to warrant a cross-posted broadcast to the lists (please be judicious with responses by only responding to the list that is appropriate if you have questions etc.). This information is also available on the homepage.
iBATIS in Action Released A book for iBATIS? No way! Yes way. The book is here. This is the first edition, targeting primarily the Java platform. But it's definitely useful for .NET and even Ruby users, even if only to understand the concepts and and ideas behind iBATIS. Everything else is just syntax. Some people may wonder if we're just trying to make money by selling documentation (sounds familiar to some no doubt). But trust us, writing technical books is NO way to make money! We did this for you, so you'd have a definitive guide to read from instead of wading through various internet resources. I think we're more worried about the Amazon.com comments than the sales... ;-) I (Clinton) really want to say what a fantastic experience it was to work with Brandon and Larry on this project. You guys did a fantastic job. You can buy the book in PDF or print at http://www.manning.com/begin/ DAO Deprecated and Made Available Separately This is a little late notice, but iBATIS for Java 2.3 has enough votes to go GA now, so I figured it would be good to note here. Part of that vote means that the DAO framework has indeed been deprecated. Deprecated doesn't mean dead. Many people can and will continue to use it. In fact, it will be a bit cleaner because it's made available separately so you can feel more comfortable changing it if you need to. Feel free to take the code and make it your own. Or just use it as is until it gets too old (it's pretty easy to switch iBATIS DAOs to Spring DAOs if and when the time is right). We've made the Java DAO framework permanently available on the Java downloads page. Deprecated basically means we just won't be adding any features to it in the future, which is pretty much the same way it's been for a couple of years -- I guess it's perfect. ;-) Kidding. The book also talks about DAOs both specifically for iBATIS and in general as well, in case you do want to write your own DAO framework for your project, or use Spring DAO. I believe Gilles and the iBATIS.NET team have also supported the idea of deprecating the iBATIS DataAccess framework as well, allowing them to focus 100% on the DataMapper, where most of the value is. The DAO framework will always be available at http://ibatis.apache.org/javadownloads.cgi iBATIS 3.0 As a team we've started a wiki whiteboard to discuss the future and the next version: iBATIS 3.0. New features in both Java and C#, as well as the influence of Ruby and Rails will allow us to build an amazing modern framework that still holds true to the iBATIS core values. Have a look at the wiki and please post your thoughts in the comments section. The whiteboard can be found on the wiki, or by clicking this direct TinyURL link: http://tinyurl.com/2tbs46 Best regards, Clinton Begin