For the past few weeks, I've been working on what I'd thought of
as an 'object database emulation layer', which would allow me to store
Java objects in a PostgreSQL database in much the same way that a
typical object database would. Needless to say, I was doing this
naively, based on raw need and the fact that there was currently no
decent, free apparatus to enable transparent persistent storage of Java
objects. (It's to the point where schema translation and object
marshalling are fully functional. I'm using AspectJ to enable me to
provide transparency.)
Needless to say, I had not heard about JDO
(http://softwaredev.earthweb.com/java/article/0,,12082_918111,00.html).
Has there been any discussion amongst the development team about
providing a JDO implementation for PostgreSQL? (Sun's plan seems to be
to let the database vendors implement an interface (which is almost
finalized, and very similar to OMG's specifiction for an OODB interface,
with some extra java-centric things thrown in) that their expert group
has written. They've provided a reference implementation which is
ostensibly a starting point for said vendors and an example store which
writes flat files.) It seems like it would be a great thing to be able
to provide this sort of functionality. I'm still trying to figure out
who (say, Oracle et al) is planning adopting the interface and providing
an implementation and on what schedule they plan on doing so, but I
personally know many, many people who would flock to a free-software
solution to transparent persistence for Java. If there's a current
effort being made toward this goal, I'd love to help out. If not, I'd
like to give it a try!
Any thoughts, or ideas? Is everyone already doing this without
me? =)
-dj trombley
<dtrom@bumba.net>