Core J2EE Pattern

Use a Data Access Object (DAO) to abstract and encapsulate all access to the data source. The DAO manages the connection with the data source to obtain and store data.

The DAO implements the access mechanism required to work with the data source. The data source could be a persistent store like an RDBMS, an external service like a B2B exchange, a repository like an LDAP database, or a business service accessed via CORBA Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP) or low-level sockets. The business component that relies on the DAO uses the simpler interface exposed by the DAO for its clients.

BusinessObject

The BusinessObject represents the data client. It is the object that requires access to the data source to obtain and store data. A BusinessObject may be implemented as a session bean, entity bean, or some other Java object, in addition to a servlet or helper bean that accesses the data source.

DataAccessObject

The DataAccessObject is the primary object of this pattern. The DataAccessObject abstracts the underlying data access implementation for the BusinessObject to enable transparent access to the data source. The BusinessObject also delegates data load and store operations to the DataAccessObject.

DataSource

This represents a data source implementation. A data source could be a database such as an RDBMS, OODBMS, XML repository, flat file system, and so forth. A data source can also be another system (legacy/mainframe), service (B2B service or credit card bureau), or some kind of repository (LDAP).

TransferObject

This represents a Transfer Object used as a data carrier. The DataAccessObject may use a Transfer Object to return data to the client. The DataAccessObject may also receive the data from the client in a Transfer Object to update the data in the data source.

Strategies

Automatic DAO Code Generation Strategy

Since each BusinessObject corresponds to a specific DAO, it is possible to establish relationships between the BusinessObject, DAO, and underlying implementations (such as the tables in an RDBMS). Once the relationships are established, it is possible to write a simple application-specific code-generation utility that generates the code for all DAOs required by the application. The metadata to generate the DAO can come from a developer-defined descriptor file. Alternatively, the code generator can automatically introspect the database and provide the necessary DAOs to access the database. If the requirements for DAOs are sufficiently complex, consider using third-party tools that provide object-to-relational mapping for RDBMS databases. These tools typically include GUI tools to map the business objects to the persistent storage objects and thereby define the intermediary DAOs. The tools automatically generate the code once the mapping is complete, and may provide other value-added features such as results caching, query caching, integration with application servers, integration with other third-party products (e.g., distributed caching), and so forth.