with the property spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto it's possible to auto generated table from entities.
What I need is that only some specific entities should be generated to tables in database an the rest of the entities do nothing.
It this possible ?
I guess this is your question here? https://discourse.hibernate.org/t/i-would-really-like-to-know-more-about-the-update/5455
Like I wrote there already, you shouldn't use hbm2ddl for anything other than development purposes. Use a proper schema management tool like Liquibase or Flyway.
As #pcsutar already commented, impl said SchemaFilterProvider
I am little confused, when see, why most programmers use annotation-based setup for database table constraints. For example
#Column(unique=true, nullable=false)
Why do we need that, if(as I heard) in real projects mostly used SQL migrations, so you are able to create this constraints in table creations, like CREATE table... name varchar UNIQUE NOT NULL.
Do I need to setup it in both ways, or is it enough to do in SQL?
And how often SQL migrations used(Flyway, Liquibase) in projects?
Additionally, Hibernate creates unreadable constraints in database, otherwise in SQL you create understandable names of constrains.
You can choose whether to let Hibernate to manage your schema or not. If yes , the database schema will be created or updated based on the changes of the annotation mapping.
I personally will not let Hibernate to manage my database schema as I want to be exactly know what is going on with the schema changes . The hibernate documentation also suggests it somehow:
Although the automatic schema generation is very useful for testing
and prototyping purposes, in a production environment, it’s much more
flexible to manage the schema using incremental migration scripts.
while Flyway, Liquibase is the kind of incremental migration scripts tool.
Do I need to setup it in both ways, or is it enough to do in SQL? And
how often SQL migrations used(Flyway, Liquibase) in projects?
If you do not use the automatic schema generation feature , you don't need to specify unique in #Column which only has meaning in case of automatic schema generation.
For nullable , it depends on hibernate.check_nullability setting.If it is turned on and you set #Column(nullable=false) , Hibernate will help to check this column cannot be null in the application level without asking the DB to check it. But even if do not set it , the database constraint (assuming you create a non-null constraint for it in DB) will eventually check it and not allow you to save the null value
I use Autogenerate DDL feature from Hibernate to create my tables and columns.
However, I end up deleting many columns in my entities but those columns remain in the database.
Is there a script that could identify those unmapped columns and tables so I could manually delete them?
Right now, I do it manually but it's becoming problematic as the database grows.
I am afraid you there is no automated way to do that.
Alternatively you can drop the whole table before building and loading the project and let hibernate re-create it with your defined column names.
The recommended thing is:
We should use the hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto property only in the development environment, not is the production
If hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto=create-drop, hibernate will drop and create a new database every time of deployment,
that means we can track the database state and its consistency.
If hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto=update, hibernate will only update the database with the changes to made in model/entity classes,
but it should not be trusted for the production environment/database.
hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto should be set to default for the production environment, so that no databases changes should be reflected from hibernate in production.
For development and deployment of my WAR application I use the drop-and-create functionality. Basically erasing everything from the database and then automatically recreating all the necessary tables and fields according to my #Entity-classes.
Obviously, for production the drop-and-create functionality is out of question. How would I have to create the database tables and fields?
The nice thing about #Entity-classes is that due to OQL and the use of EntityManager all the database queries are generated, hence the WAR application gets database independent. If I now had to create the queries by hand in SQL and then let the application execute them, then I would have to decide in which sql dialect they are (i.e. MySQL, Oracly, SQL Server, ...). Is there a way to create the tables database independently? Is there a way to run structural database updates as well database independently (i.e. for database version 1 to database version 2)? Like altering field or table names, adding tables, droping tables, etc.?
Thank you #Qwerky for mentioning Liquibase. This absolutely is a solution and perfect for my case as I won't have to worry about versioning anymore. Liquibase is very easy to understand and studied in minutes.
For anyone looking for database versioning / scheme appliance:
Liquibase
I spent all of yesterday reading various articles/tutorials on Hibernate and although I am blown-away by how powerful it is, I have one major concern with it.
It seems that the standard practice is to allow Hibernate to design/generate your DB schema for you, which is a new and scary concept that I am choking on. From the tutorials I read, you just add a new entity to your hibernate.cfg.xml config file, annotate any POJO you want with #Entity, and voila - Hibernate creates the tables for you. Although this is very cool, it has me wondering about a handful of scenarios:
What if you already have a DB schema and the one Hibernate wants to generate for you does not conform to it? What if you have a crazy DBA that refuses to budge on the pre-defined (non-Hibernate) schema?
What if you have reference tables with tens of thousands of records in it (like all the cities in the world)? Would you have to instantiate and save() tens of thousands of unique POJOs or is there a way to configure Hibernate so it will honor and not overwrite data already existing in your tables?
What if you want to do perf tuning on your schema/tables? This includes indexing, normalizing above and beyond what Hibernate creates automatically?
What if you want to add constraints or triggers to your tables? Indexes?
I guess at the root of this is the following:
It looks like Hibernate creates and forces a particular schema/config on your DB. I am wondering how this agenda will conflict with our platform standards, our DBA philosophies, and our ability to perf tune/tweak tables that Hibernate interacts with.
Thanks in advance.
I think you're attributing too much power to Hibernate.
Hibernate does have an idiom that may influence database implementation.
Hibernate does not generate a schema for you unless you ask it to do so. It's possible to start with an existing schema and map it to Java objects using Hibernate. But it might not be possible or optimal if the schema conflicts with Hibernate requirements.
If the DBA won't budge - as they shouldn't - or Hibernate can't accomodate you, then you have your answer: you can't use Hibernate.
Your DBA might consent, but your app might find that the dynamic SQL that's generated for you by Hibernate isn't what you want.
Fortunately for you, it's not the only game in town.
I don't think implementations have to be all or none. If you use simple JDBC to access reference data, what's the harm?
Database design considerations should be independent of Hibernate. Constraints, triggers, normalization, and indexes should be driven by business needs, not your middleware choices.
If you don't have a solid object model, or the schema can't accomodate it, then you should reconsider Hibernate. There's straight JDBC, stored procedures, Spring JDBC, and iBatis as alternatives.
Hibernate comes with a default way to map objects to tables - like several tools/libraries, it favours convention over configuration for simplicity.
However, if you want to map the entities to database tables differently, you can explicitly tell Hibernate how these are mapped (from simple attributes such as changing the table name, through to redefining the foreign-key relationships between related entities and how this is persisted).
If you do this correctly, you don't need to instantiate and save existing data, as this would be pointless - the database already contains the information about the entities in exactly the form that Hibernate understands. (Think about it - to load and then immediately save an entity should always be a no-op, and so can be skipped altogether.)
So the short answer to your question is "no". If you don't care for designing tables, you can let Hibernate adopt a reasonable default. If you do want to design your schema explicitly though, you can do this and then describe that exact schema to Hibernate.
As someone who's worked on java and hibernate in the enterprise for a long time, I have seen very few projects which use this capability. You'll see some build tools and other things do this, but for a real enterprise app, i've never seen this.
Most DBA's won't let the application user create tables. They rely on a privileged user to do those things, and the user that the app connects as would have r/w privs on the data but not the schema itself.
As a result, you write the SQL yourself, and you do the hibernate mappings to match. It doesn't mean your object design won't influence your SQL, but you should still always create your schema upfront.
No. You can use hibernate tools to generate the entities from existing database.
There are 2 ways you can go about in using Hibernate. If you have good DBA or database designer, then it is better to design the database and then map it into hibernate.
On the other hand if you don't have DBA and have good developer then let Hibernate generate Database for you.
The concept behind Hibernate is to map Database and the Objects. So it is called as ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) tool.
Read here for Object Relational Impedance.
This is the preferred way for a quick'n dirty prototype or a simple tutorial, but it's far from being the preferred way for any production application. I largely prefer designing the database independently, using scripts to generate the schema, tables, views, indexes, etc., and map the schema to entities.
As long as the mapping finds the tables and columns in the database, everything is fine.
As soon as you have data in your database and the schema must change, you'll have to write migration scripts anyway. You can't just drop everything and restart from scratch. The tutorials are written for developers starting with Hibernate and who must discover Hibernate as quick as possible, without dealing with complex SQL scripts.
What if you already have a DB schema ...
I don't know where you get that impression. Hibernate can use existing schema. It is quite flexible.
What if you have reference tables ...
Make the relationship LAZY, and it won't load automatically. Only changed object will be saved.
What if you want to do perf tuning ...
Just don't use the generated schema. It is just a starting point. You can customize as you need.
What if you want to add constraints or triggers to your tables? Indexes?
Some as above.
You can use hibernate with an existing database schema.
You can use various annotations to map to existing tables and columns, for example:
#Table(name = "dbschema.dbTable") - should be placed before your class file to map it
#Column(name = "colName") - to map a column
Just be sure that the hibernate is configured with this option:
hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto=update
If you set this to create it will create the schema, so do not do this in your case.
Use hibernate/jpa when appropiate. A common practice when designing apps is to extract the draft and alter it manually after needs (indices etc). However, it will be a pain for you if you change the db layout from hibernate way to do things. Lots of the beauty of JPA will be lost. For tasks which require heavy performance tuning and full control - just go for reguar jdbc.
Some answers:
A. It is possible to add an index annotation : see the table annotation.
B. If you have reference tables, you may choose to have lazy fetching or eager fetching (i.e - if your tables represent a person and a its books - whether to load a person without its book, or with its books)
C. Hibernate can be used to work on existing schema. The schema might not be trivial to work with , but as other have said, you should design db only according to business needs, and not according to framework conventions
D. I would like to encourage you also to read what hibernate does "under the hood" - it uses lots of usage of proxies, which hurts performance, you must understand well the scope of session , and the usages of 1st level and 2nd level cache .
E. Following what I wrote at section D - working with triggers will cause your DB to change "under the hood" when it comes to hibernate. Consider a case where updating a record will create (using a trigger) an entry in some archiving table , and let's say this table is also annotated via hibernate - your hibernate caching will not be aware of the change that happend outside of the application scope.
F. It is important to me to state that I'm not against Hibernate, but you should not use it for all solutions, this is a mistake I did in the past. I now work with Spring-JDBC and I'm quite pleased (for our application needs it will be hard to use Hibernate, and I assume we will consider this only in the case we need to support more than one DB flavor).