Implementing database access using Spring or separate library / pattern? - java

I'm working on an app which uses hard coded sql statements to retrieve data from a database and then populate this data into pojo's. Spring jdbc template is being used so dont need to worry about opening/closing connections. Using hard-coded sql statements seems wrong ?
Is there a design pattern or library I can use to abstact the sql statements ?

Look at MyBatis (formly iBatis).
It let's you extract hardcoded SQLs into XML files (or even annotations),
It integrates with Spring container, and can use Spring Transaction.
and many more.

Using JdbcTemplate, your application code still has the responsibility to provide sql and the JdbcTemplate can then execute SQL query or updates, iterate over ResultSets and catch JDBC exceptions. If you want to get away with writing hard-coded sql statements, you need to look into an ORM tools like Hibernate, iBatisetc

Here's a good previous discussion of some of the issues surrounding the choice between using raw SQL or an ORM tool:
Hibernate, iBatis, Java EE or other Java ORM tool

There is nothing inherently wrong with having SQL inside Java classes (although it's a bit controversial). If you want to externalize SQL queries you can:
use MyBatis which is very mature
put SQL in your applicationContext.xml Spring configuration file and inject it to POJOs (poor man's MyBatis)
hide SQL behind DAO pattern (interface SomeDao and class SqlSomeDao having SQL encapsulated)
...going for full ORM like JPA if you already have SQLs is not the best idea
Also check out Spring Data JDBC generic DAO - small DAO implementation on top of JdbcTemplate and RowMapper<T>. Disclaimer: I'm an author of this library.

Related

Spring Application JPA and JDBC

I am starting with a new project and currently evaluating whether to use JPA or JDBC. Our operations mostly are going to be an bulk-insert and bulk-read and very rarely single insert/read.
I checked a prototype with JPA and JDBC and realized that both has its own merits and limitations.
Considering the current use case that for a fact I will only have always a bulk read and bulk write, which one will be a better option to go with ?
Spring JPA Repository gives a simple method save(Collection) which can take a collection and save as well.
Also Validations are also not be considered here, as the payload will already be validated in the layers above and the database layer should just do the read/write operations.
Does the JPA save(Collection<>) method in turn uses the jdbc templates or is it entirely a different implementation ?
Thanks in advance !
We use both JPA and JDBC in one application wiht no problem. Preferably we use JPA/JPQL and fall back to JDBC if needed. For JPA we use Spring Data JPA and for JDBC Spring JDBC Template.

What's the difference between Hibernate and Spring Data JPA

What are the main differences between Hibernate and Spring Data JPA?
When should we not use Hibernate or Spring Data JPA?
Also, when may Spring JDBC template perform better than Hibernate and Spring Data JPA?
Hibernate is a JPA implementation, while Spring Data JPA is a JPA data access abstraction. Spring Data JPA cannot work without a JPA provider.
Spring Data offers a solution to the DDD Repository pattern or the legacy GenericDao custom implementations. It can also generate JPA queries on your behalf through method name conventions.
With Spring Data, you may use Hibernate, EclipseLink, or any other JPA provider. A very interesting benefit of using Spring or Java EE is that you can control transaction boundaries declaratively using the #Transactional annotation.
Spring JDBC is much more lightweight, and it's intended for native querying, and if you only intend to use JDBC alone, then you are better off using Spring JDBC to deal with the JDBC verbosity.
Therefore, Hibernate and Spring Data are complementary rather than competitors.
There are 3 different things we are using here :
JPA : Java persistence api which provide specification for persisting, reading, managing data from your java object to relations in database.
Hibernate: There are various provider which implement jpa. Hibernate is one of them. So we have other provider as well. But if using jpa with spring it allows you to switch to different providers in future.
Spring Data JPA : This is another layer on top of jpa which spring provide to make your life easy.
So lets understand how spring data jpa and spring + hibernate works-
Spring Data JPA:
Let's say you are using spring + hibernate for your application. Now you need to have dao interface and implementation where you will be writing crud operation using SessionFactory of hibernate. Let say you are writing dao class for Employee class, tomorrow in your application you might need to write similiar crud operation for any other entity. So there is lot of boilerplate code we can see here.
Now Spring data jpa allow us to define dao interfaces by extending its repositories(crudrepository, jparepository) so it provide you dao implementation at runtime. You don't need to write dao implementation anymore.Thats how spring data jpa makes your life easy.
I disagree SpringJPA makes live easy. Yes, it provides some classes and you can make some simple DAO fast, but in fact, it's all you can do.
If you want to do something more than findById() or save, you must go through hell:
no EntityManager access in org.springframework.data.repository classes (this is basic JPA class!)
own transaction management (hibernate transactions disallowed)
huge problems with more than one datasources configuration
no datasource pooling (HikariCP must be in use as third party library)
Why own transaction management is an disadvantage? Since Java 1.8 allows default methods into interfaces, Spring annotation based transactions, simple doesn't work.
Unfortunately, SpringJPA is based on reflections, and sometimes you need to point a method name or entity package into annotations (!). That's why any refactoring makes big crash.
Sadly, #Transactional works for primary DS only :( So, if you have more than one DataSources, remember - transactions works just for primary one :)
What are the main differences between Hibernate and Spring Data JPA?
Hibernate is JPA compatibile, SpringJPA Spring compatibile. Your HibernateJPA DAO can be used with JavaEE or Hibernate Standalone, when SpringJPA can be used within Spring - SpringBoot for example
When should we not use Hibernate or Spring Data JPA? Also, when may Spring JDBC template perform better than Hibernate / Spring Data JPA?
Use Spring JDBC only when you need to use much Joins or when you need to use Spring having multiple datasource connections. Generally, avoid JPA for Joins.
But my general advice, use fresh solution—Daobab (http://www.daobab.io).
Daobab is my Java and any JPA engine integrator, and I believe it will help much in your tasks :)
Spring Data is a convenience library on top of JPA that abstracts away many things and brings Spring magic (like it or not) to the persistence store access. It is primarily used for working with relational databases. In short, it allows you to declare interfaces that have methods like findByNameOrderByAge(String name); that will be parsed in runtime and converted into appropriate JPA queries.
Its placement atop of JPA makes its use tempting for:
Rookie developers who don't know SQL or know it badly. This is a
recipe for disaster but they can get away with it if the project is trivial.
Experienced engineers who know what they do and want to spindle up things
fast. This might be a viable strategy (but read further).
From my experience with Spring Data, its magic is too much (this is applicable to Spring in general). I started to use it heavily in one project and eventually hit several corner cases where I couldn't get the library out of my way and ended up with ugly workarounds. Later I read other users' complaints and realized that these issues are typical for Spring Data. For example, check this issue that led to hours of investigation/swearing:
public TourAccommodationRate createTourAccommodationRate(
#RequestBody TourAccommodationRate tourAccommodationRate
) {
if (tourAccommodationRate.getId() != null) {
throw new BadRequestException("id MUST NOT be specified in a body during entry creation");
}
// This is an ugly hack required for the Room slim model to work. The problem stems from the fact that
// when we send a child entity having the many-to-many (M:N) relation to the containing entity, its
// information is not fetched. As a result, we get NPEs when trying to access all but its Id in the
// code creating the corresponding slim model. By detaching the entity from the persistence context we
// force the ORM to re-fetch it from the database instead of taking it from the cache
tourAccommodationRateRepository.save(tourAccommodationRate);
entityManager.detach(tourAccommodationRate);
return tourAccommodationRateRepository.findOne(tourAccommodationRate.getId());
}
I ended up going lower level and started using JDBI - a nice library with just enough "magic" to save you from the boilerplate. With it, you have complete control over SQL queries and almost never have to fight the library.
If you prefer simplicity and more control on SQL queries then I would suggest going with Spring Data/ Spring JDBC.
Its good amount of learning curve in JPA and sometimes difficult to debug issues.
On the other hand, while you have full control over SQL, it becomes much easier to optimize query and improve performance. You can easily share your SQL with DBA or someone who has a better understanding of Database.
Hibernate is implementation of "JPA" which is a specification for Java objects in Database.
I would recommend to use w.r.t JPA as you can switch between different ORMS.
When you use JDBC then you need to use SQL Queries, so if you are proficient in SQL then go for JDBC.

How to prevent my website from sql Injection? Struts

how to prevent my website from doing sql injection in it
I am working using Struts 2 , DB MY sql .
The best way I think is to not re-invent the wheel and use the tools already available. For a small project I would recommend to simply use prepared statements when querying your database.
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/sql/PreparedStatement.html
You could also look into using an ORM like Hybernate. But make sure to use it as intended. Even HQL can be susceptible to injection. See: how much safe from SQL-Injection if using hibernate
The important thing is to not write your own native queries by concatenating query strings with values from untrusted sources.

Java efficent strategy to access a DB

A simple question: what is the more efficient way to access a db in Java/JDBC?
I'm a web developper and I'd like to write some reusable and scalable code. What is interesting for me is the use of tools like the ResultSupport: is it too expansive in terms of resource usage?
What can you suggest?
Not just JDBC specific, just general SQL stuff
If you have to rerun a query multiple times, use PreparedStatement. Use stored procedure if it is available. This is obviously not portable so YMMV.
Always close your ResultSet or Statement if you are not using it. Closing a Statement will auto close all ResultSet associated with the Statement. Still it is a good habit to close the ResultSet.
Try to restrict what can be queried eg. select * from orders where order_date between XXX and yyy. In MySQL the query may either be a full table scan or 'range' depending on how much data is returned. So deciding a how 'flexible' you want your queries to be
If you are using MySQL, use explain to optimize your query. If you are using JPA, then you don't get to see the SQL generated. (This is not strictly JDBC) You might want to enable logging on the ORM manager to display the SQL statement used. Then use explain to optimize that. You may want to use #NamedNativeQuery if the ORM generates a really convoluted query
If your JDBC driver supports batch update then use that. Batch updates is supported in PreparedStatement and ResultSet.
You can also control the commit. Good idea to turn it off if you are performing lots of updates. The call commit() yourself.
Best answer to this simple question is: "it depends".
There are many API's you can use for database access. Nearly all of them will use the JDBC API as their means to communicate with the database. So in theory, nothing can beat raw low level JDBC (just as machine code is in theory always faster than higherlevel programming languages).
But as you also like to write reusable code, I suggest you look into JPA. It's the Java standard for object persistence to relational databases. It’s performance is quite good and it’s very portable.
As JPA is just a specification, you can choose you’re own implementation: Hibernate, OpenJPA or any compliant Java EE server.
It is very important to use always a connection pool DataSource such as c3p0.
There is a project that maps java objects to mysql databases. Azirt.
Use connection pooling (either the one from your container or a standalone connection pool like c3p0 or DBCP) and something like DBUtils or Spring's JdbcTemplate.
I think the easiest and most common way is to use Spring and their JDBCTemplate.
The best approach likely depends on the stack you are using to create your web app. If you're starting afresh then Spring is a good way to go.

Middle ground between JDBC and Hibernate?

We've been implementing Hibernate recently as a replacement for JDBC.
What I like is not having to constantly write SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT statements and the associated PreparedStatement and ResultSet code.
However we've been struggling with random bizarre behavior (example A) which I find hard to understand and resolve due to all the different configuration/feature options and the associated Hibernate behavior. I find some of the features like caching, lazy loading, etc, etc very cool but way more than I need - and ultimately confusing.
Is there a better middle ground for someone just looking to avoid the tediousness of JDBC but who doesn't need all the features of Hibernate?
not completely avoiding jdbc, but ... my suggestion is to use the jbdc support provided by spring framework. You still need to write your select, update and inserts, but spring nicely wraps it so you usually don't care about the result set, closing connections, cleaning up your code and such.
Have a look at this chapter from the spring documentations to see the details. You can create an entire dao layer that appears just like the hibernate dao layer, but the internal implementation is different. The RowMapper interface lets you handle the conversion from result sets to objects very nicely. Overall it provides a clean separation of concerns.
(another alternative is to use iBATIS for lightweight O/R mapping, or at least to keep your sql queries outside of Java code).
How about using Hibernate (or TopLink) as a JPA provider. IMO I find the JPA annotation-based approach to doing ORM a lot easier to understand / implement than Hibernate directly - and you can always drop down and do 'difficult' stuff with Hibernate directly.

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