Greg Trasuk is the owner of StratusCom Manufacturing Systems Inc http://stratuscom.com. He
specializes in operational performance management systems for repetitive
manufacturing using Java, Jini, and J2EE technogies. He is the author
of the Harvester Application Container.
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| Author(s) | Clinton Begin, Brandon Goodin, Larry Meadors |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Manning Press |
| PubDate | 2007 |
| Reviewer | Greg Trasuk |
One Minute Review
Positives
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Negatives
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Sections
Intent & Audience
iBATIS in Action is a comprehensive guide and tutorial to the iBATIS Data Mapper framework http://ibatis.apache.org/. iBATIS provides a simple way to integrate SQL queries into an application, and turn the results of those queries into objects in the virtual machine. It is an alternative to frameworks like Hibernate http://hibernate.org/ or the Java Persistence API http://java.sun.com/javaee/technologies/persistence.jsp.
Relevance of material
Nearly every application of any consequence includes database-backed storage. While object/relational mapping systems like Hibernate and JPA have become popular in recent years, many developers eventually find difficulty using them, either because of complicated domain models or the challenge of mapping to pre-existing databases. iBATIS provides a more minimalist framework that maps objects to SQL queries under full control of the developer.
Chapter highlights
Chapter 1: The iBATIS Philosophy - outlines different approaches to data persistence in enterprise applications, including stored procedures, inline SQL, dynamic SQL, and Object/Relational Mapping. The authors start by indicating strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches, then explain how iBATIS tries to use the best ideas from each approach. They explain how iBATIS fits into a layered enterprise software design. Finally they explain how iBATIS handles common real-world challenges like database ownership, complex keys, denormalized or overnormalized databases, and skinny data models.
Chapter 2: What is iBATIS? - presents a brief overview of iBATIS, discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the iBATIS approach, describes when and when not to use iBATIS, then discusses the future direction of iBATIS development. The examples provide an excellent illustration of how to setup a basic iBATIS configuration in your application and nicely demonstrate the simplicity of using iBATIS.
Chapter 3: Installing and Configuring iBATIS - does just what the title suggests; provides details on how to download, install and configure iBATIS, including instructions for building the product from source. It describes how to use iBATIS both in a standalone application and a web application.
Chapter 4: Working with Mapped Statements - describes the basics of JavaBeans as iBATIS uses them, and describes the iBATIS API. The chapter introduces select statements, parameter mapping and result mapping (inline and explicit).
Chapter 5: Executing Nonquery Statements - shows how to do inserts and updates with iBATIS, talks about reading back primary keys generated by the database, and shows how to call SQL stored procedures.
Chapter 6: Using Advanced Query Techniques - iBATIS normally uses JavaBeans as its input to queries and output of result sets, but can also use XML documents (useful for instance if running iBATIS inside [Cocoon | http://cocoon.apache.org/]), as described in Chapter 6. Other topics include loading related records, lazy loading, handling the "N+1 selects" problem, mapping inheritance, issuing Data Definition Language (DDL) statements from iBATIS, and handling large data sets.
Chapter 7: Transactions - tells how to control iBATIS' use of transactions. In addition to the iBATIS-specific information, it also includes a nice overview of transactions and how they fit into a multi-tier architecture.
Chapter 8: Dynamic SQL - describes how to dynamically generate a SQL query string in iBATIS.
Chapter 9: Caching - covers cache handling in iBATIS. Again, the chapter includes a decent background on why, when, and when not to use a caching strategy.
Chapter 10: iBATIS Data Access Objects - describes the iBATIS DAO package and how it helps to write data access objects. Probably the weakest chapter; I found myself wondering until near the end what exactly iBATIS brings to the party here.
Chapter 11: Doing More with DAO - talks about using the iBATIS DAO framework to create DAOs that use other mechanisms than iBATIS, for instance, plain JDBC, Spring, LDAP and Hibernate. Also contains an interesting introduction to LDAP.
Chapter 12: Extending iBATIS - describes the pluggable extension mechanisms supplied by iBATIS, so you can override type conversion, transaction management, cache implementation, etc. Most users can skip this chapter, but if you need it, the information is here.
Chapter 13: iBATIS Best Practices - gives recommendations for best practices surrounding unit testing, source code control, naming conventions, etc. Many of the suggestions are familiar to experienced developers, but it's nice to see other peoples perspectives. Beginners will also find this section useful.
Chapter 14: Putting it all Together - walks the reader through
develoment of a nicely-structured web application using Struts, Tiles
and
iBATIS. There's more time spent on Struts and Tiles than on iBATIS,
so the chapter seems slightly out-of-place. On the other hand, it's a
good introduction to multi-tier architecture that beginning enterprise
developers can make good use of.
Appendix: iBATIS.NET Quick Start - gives a short overview of the .NET port of iBATIS.
Rating
The book is readable and nicely structured. It has numerous examples and explanatory text, yet doesn't seem bloated. Experienced developers can read book quickly to understand the philosophy and assumptions behind the iBATIS framework. The authors obviously have extensive experience in enterprise development, and beginners will benefit from their insights (on iBATIS and on enterprise development in general), which are scattered liberally throughout the book.
The authors are developers of iBATIS, so you would expect them to promote the iBATIS framework in the book, and they do. Refreshingly, they also point out situations where iBATIS might not be the right solution, and demonstrate other solutions that still fit with the iBATIS framework.
There are one or two non-technical errors, as expected in a first edition (for example there's a section that talks about a class called BaseBean, but the heading refers to BeanBase), but not so many as to be distracting.
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