[Objectbridge-developers] ObJectBridge 0.1.83 released

[Thomas M. <tho...@ho...>]

Dear ObJectBridge fans,

I just assembled a new release and put it on the SourceForge download
area.

In the last two weeks I tried to assist Sascha Koenig, who is evaluating
OJB for the OpenEMed project (http://OpenMed.sourceforge.net/), in
getting a sample application running using OJB.
He discovered some bugs had not been covered by JUnit tests. And he also
detected conceptual deficiencies that only showed up due to special
requirements of the data structures in his application.
Such "real-world" experience is necessary to find other bugs, defects,
missing features, etc.
Therefore I'd like to invite YOU to use OJB in your applications. Thanks
for your feedback!


>From the release-notes:


New features:
- Support for user defined collections. It is now possible to use user
defined collections 
  (e.g. typed collections) as Collection attributes. These collections
must
  implement the interface ojb.broker.ManageableCollection to provide
minimum
  interoperability with the PersistenceBroker mechanisms. There is a new
  TestClass test.ojb.broker.TypedCollectionTest testing and
demonstrating all
  relevant techniques.  
- There is a first fully functional ODMG Collection:
  Dlist. It's implemented by ojb.server.collections.DListImpl. There is
a
  TestClass test.ojb.odmg.DListTest testing and demonstrating the usage
of this
  collection. 

changes, refactorings:
- Complete redesign of the ODMG Transaction-mechanism. I unified the
concepts of 
  David's TransactionWrapper objects with my idea of ObjectModification
  objects, that had been responsible for different aspects of the
transaction
  management in OJB. 
- Removed interface IPobject and baseclass Pobject. These
  were meant as examples for encapsulating PersistenceBroker code in
business
  objects. I don't want to encourage such a poor design any longer... 
- Collection attributes can now be defined without reverse
ReferenceAttributes.
  This design was based on the wrong assumption, that there is always a
unique
  ReferenceAttribute describing the foreignkey relation betweeen the
involved
  tables. Now Collection Attributes can be defined without specifying an
  inverse reverse ReferenceAttribute. To make this possible it's now
necessary
  to specify the list of foreign key attributes (respectively their
Descriptor
  Ids) within the CollectionDescriptor. 
- Harmonized the syntax for ReferenceDescriptors and
CollectionsDescriptors
  in the repository.dtd. Now <auto.retrieve>, <auto.update>,
<auto.delete> can
  be used in both classes. Usage of these tags is now optional. If
  <auto.retrieve> is ommited, true is the default value. If
<auto.update>,
  <auto.delete> default value is false. 
bug fixes: 
- storing of collection attributes did not work due to an error during
the
  last refactoring. No JUnit test detected the error :-( 
  Thanks to Sascha Koenig for reporting this bug.

Open bugs:
- Testmethods in test.ojb.odmg.OdmgExamples still report failures.
  in my development environment (VisualAge) I can't reproduce them...  

kind regards,

Thomas