Java Universal Binding Storing Java Objects in Relational and Object-Oriented Databases.pdf

Java Universal Binding: Storing Java Objects in Relational and Object-Oriented Databases Florian Xhumari y? Cassio Souza dos Santos ? Marcin Skubiszewski y? August 29, 1997y INRIA, Rocquencourt 78153 Le Chesnay, France FirstName.LastName@inria.fr ? O2 Technology 7, rue du Parc de Clagny 78000 Versailles, France http://www.o2tech.fr Abstract We introduce JUB (Java Universal Binding), a software tool that stores Java objects in relational and object-oriented databases. JUB supports the object-oriented DBMS O2, the relational DBMS Oracle and Sybase, and all the relational databases which can be accessed via JDBC. In the context of O2, Java objects stored in the database are first-class database objects: they can be accessed by all the clients of O2 (O2 supports application programs written in C, C++, Smalltalk, and O2C). We describe JUB from the application programmer’s point of view. We discuss the architecture of JUB, and the way in which Java classes and objects are translated into O2 types and objects. We describe the current status and the performance of the product. 1 Introduction Many different approaches have been proposed to allow Java programmers and applications to take profit from database technology. These approaches can be divided into two main groups: those proposing an extension to the Java language or virtual machine, and those taking the language as it is and defining a persistence service layer on top of the Java language and of an existing database system. The first group aims at defining a persistent version of Java that requires a nonstandard compiler and/or virtual machine. For example, the systems described in [2, 1, 6] belong to this group. The second group can be further divided, according to the level of integration between the database system and Java, into database drivers (JDBC) and language bindings (ODMG). JDBC drivers [7] provide access to existing databases through an API that reflects the underlying database model. Applications must m