Sun Stands Behind JDO

Sun Microsystems Tuesday threw its corporate weight behind an organization developing a Java-powered database and storage technology.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based network computer maker said it has joined JDOCentral.com as a charter member to support the JDO standard also known as specification request JSR-012.

The standard describes a Java API to manage data in a persistent storage/database as objects. Members of JDOCentral.com say the group was created to educate the community and promote the benefits of this standard.

Among other motivations, Sun said it jumped onboard was because it wanted to give developers choices for access to databases.

“JDBC, Container Managed Persistence, and Java Data Objects offer features of interest to different developers,” Sun Distinguished Engineer Deputy CTO Rick Cattell said in a statement. “Sun promotes standards that give customers choice with compatibility, which is why the Java Community Process is of such importance.”

In most recent news, the JBoss Group and Trifork announced plans to incorporate JDO into their J2EE application servers. Likewise Sybase recently said it has partnered with Libelis, a European JDO vendor, to provide JDO products for enterprise software developers.

“The groundswell of vendor support for JDO and its popularity among application developers has been very impressive,” said David Jordon, Founder, Object Identity Inc. “JDO allows you to define your application’s data model in terms of a Java object model, without imposing any design constraints or requiring use of facilities that lead to vendor lock-in. In addition, JDO applications are simpler, smaller, and thus much cheaper to develop — providing a strategic advantage over alternative facilities.”

The group says there are a number of benefits for developers using JDO. Transparent persistence gives the developer the ability to deal with just Java objects without worrying about dealing with non-Java database code. Underlying code within JDO takes care of working with the database and such. The developer doesn’t need to learn a query language like SQL, rather they can focus on the Java language. For example, doing a database Boolean query against the data in the database is a simple Java Boolean query. There is no fancy syntax.

Because JDO is a Java API, it is portable. Most database query languages are not portable. Although SQL was aimed at being portable, the major databases have spun off their own flavors. Microsoft SQL Server uses Transact-SQL. Oracle uses PL-SQL.

JDO also integrates with Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB). In fact, JDO has historical ties to EJB Container Managed Persistence (CMP), yet took a different path to address different needs.

Editor’s note: EarthWeb editor Bradley Jones contributed to this report. EarthWeb is a Jupitermedia property.

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