Chapter 4. Managing Persistent Objects
Java Persistence API has two sides. The first is the ability to map objects to a relational database. Configuration by exception allows persistence providers to do most of the work without much code, but the richness of JPA also allows customized mapping from objects to tables using either annotation or XML descriptors. From simple mapping (changing the name of a column) to more complex mapping (inheritance), JPA offers a wide spectrum of customizations. As a result, you can map almost any object model to a legacy database.
The other aspect of JPA is the ability to query these mapped objects. In JPA, the centralized service to manipulate instances of entities in a standard way is the entity manager. It provides ...
Get Beginning Java™ EE 6 Platform with GlassFish™ 3 now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
