Java Data Objects

Application Identity

You can use application identity with a datastore that allows the values in an instance to determine its identity. The values of one or more persistent fields in the instance form a unique value that is referred to as the primary key ; the fields are referred to as the primary-key fields. The application is responsible for generating the values of the primary-key fields to ensure they collectively have a unique value for each instance in the datastore. The primary-key fields must have a unique value for a given class and its subclasses that use the same application identity class.

Primary-Key Fields

You indicate that a Java field is a component of the primary key in the metadata by setting the primary-key attribute of the field’s associated field element to "true“. Each field of the primary key must have this attribute set to "true“; it has a default value of "false“. The primary-key fields of a persistent class must be persistent. Therefore, the persistence-modifier attribute of the field metadata element cannot be set to "transactional" or "none“. The primary-key fields become a property of the persistent class that cannot be changed after the class is enhanced. If you need to change the set of fields in a primary key, you will need to enhance the class again. Read access to primary-key fields is never mediated.

The type of primary-key fields must be serializable and should be one of the primitive types, String, Date, Byte, Short, Integer, Long, Float, ...