I want to implement a Spring Data Repository for a database which is not currentlty supported (hyphothetical question - no need to ask about the database).
How is this possible and where can I have an example of that?
Short answer is "yes, definitely". One of the main Spring-data's intentions is to unify access to different data storage technologies under same API style. So you can implement spring-data adapter for any database as long as it is worth implementing a connector to that database in Java (which is definitely possible for the majority of databases).
Long answer would take several blog posts or even a small book :-) But let me just highlight couple of moments. Each of the existing spring-data modules expose one of (or both) the API flavors:
imperative - in a form of various template classes (e.g. RedisTemplate). It is mostly for the databases that don't have query language, but only a programmatic API. So you're just wrapping your db's API into template class and you're done.
declarative - in a form of so called Declarative Repositories, quite sophisticated mechanism of matching annotations on method signatures or method signatures themselves to a db's native queries. Luckily spring-data-commons module provides a lot of scaffolding and common infrastructure code for this, so you just need to fill the gaps for your specific data storage mechanism. You can look at slide deck from my conference talk, where I explained on a high level the mechanics of how particular spring-data module generates real implementations of repositories based on user declarations. Or you can just go into any of the existing modules and look into source code. The most interesting parts there are usually RepositoryFactory and QueryLookupStrategy implementations.
That is extremely simplified view of the spring-data concepts. In order to get more detailed information and explanations of core principles, I'd suggest reading spring-data-commons reference documentation and having a look at spring-data-keyvalue project, which is a good starting point to implement Spring Data Module for key-value storages.
Related
When we talk about spring (which ever module say jdbc), one of the reasons we use it is because it enables dependency injection and controls lifecycle of beans/classes. In programming, one of the most important fundamental is to code for interfaces rather than implementations, so today if I am using sql server driver v1, I can change it to v2 tomorrow if my code is written in such a way that it cares about Driver interface and not the implementations, then in what case would I ever need coding over configuration ?
The wording of your question seems a bit strange to me. Perhaps you are asking if there are any drawbacks to using Spring-like dependency injection. I can think of a few drawbacks, but whether these drawbacks outweigh the potential benefits of Spring is a matter of opinion.
Unfortunately, a Spring XML file is much more verbose than code to achieve similar (but hard-coded) initialisation of objects.
A programmer has to look not just at code but also at a Spring XML file to figure out what is going on. This, arguably, is a form of the Yo-yo problem.
One significant benefit of Spring is that it can be used to instantiate and configure any Java class (assuming the classes provide getters and setters). In particular, Java classes do not need to be polluted with the need to inherit from framework infrastructure classes. If you don't mind polluting classes with the need to inherit from framework infrastructure, then it is possible to have much more concise configuration files for instantiating and configuring objects. A case study illustrating this idea can be found in Chapters 9, 10 and 11 of the Config4* Practical Usage Guide. I am not proposing that the approach used in that case study be used for all applications, but I think it is a good approach to use when there is a complex, standardised API (such as for JMS) that is implemented by multiple products. In the case study, the approach results in a significantly easier-to-use API and eliminates some potential bugs from applications. Spring doesn't offer such benefits.
Section 9.4.2 of the Config4* Practical Usage Guide outlines a 9-step initialisation process for typical JMS applications. The framework library discussed in the case study ensures that those 9 steps are carried out in the correct order. It has been years since I looked at Spring so I might be wrong, but I don't think Spring has the flexibility to (easily or perhaps at all) enforce such a complex 9-step initialisation mechanism.
We are beginning the process of re-architecting the systems within our company.
One of the key components of the work is a new data model which better meets our requirements.
A major part of the initial phase of the work is to design and build a data migration tool.
This will take data from one or more existing systems and migrate it to the new model.
Some requirements:
Transformation of data to the new model
Enrichment of data, with default values or according to business rules
Integration with existing systems to pull data
Integration with Salesforce CRM which is being introduced into the company.
Logging and notification about failures
Within the Spring world, which is the best Spring project to use as the underlying framework for such a data migration tool?
My initial thoughts are to look at implementing the tool using Spring Integration.
This would:
Through the XML or DSL, allow for the high level data flow to be seen, understood, and edited (possibly using a visual tool such as a STS plugin). Being able to view the high level flow in such a way is a big advantage.
Connectors to work with different data sources.
Transformers components to be built to migrate data formats.
Routers to route the data in the new model to endpoints which connect with systems.
However, are there other Spring projects, such as Spring Data or Spring Batch, which are a better match for the requirements?
Very much appreciate feedback and ideas.
I would certainly start with spring-integration which exposes bare bones implementation for Enterprise Integration Patterns which are at the core of most/all of your requirements listed.
It is also an exceptionally great problem modelling tool which helps you better understand the problem and then envision its implementation in one cohesive integration flow
Later on, once you have a clear understanding of how things are working it would be extremely simple to take it to the next level by introducing the "other frameworks" you mentioned/tagged adding #spring-cloud-data-flow and #spring-cloud-stream.
Overall this question is rather broad, so consider following the above pointers and get started and raise more concrete questions.
I'm thinking about adding GraphQL functionalities to my Spring Boot application.
I found there are two artifacts for that.
One is com.graphql-java-kickstart:graphql-spring-boot-starter and the other is com.graphql-java:graphql-spring-boot-starter.
Which one should I choose?
These are different Starters (by different teams) providing different features, so there's no right or wrong answer. Here's a quick overview of what I'm aware is available:
The original starter made by the graphql-java team (com.graphql-java:graphql-spring-boot-starter) is now, I believe, defunct and superseded by the Spring GraphQL.
Spring GraphQL (org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web or org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-webflux) is intended for schema-first development, is relatively simple and not very feature rich, but it's easy to use and works well with other Spring projects (like e.g. WebFlux and Spring Security).
If you want to go code-first (which I argue is still schema-first, just better), use graphql-spqr-spring-boot-starter, which will generate the GraphQL schema and an end-point for you, with no extra code needed. It's quickest way possible to expose Spring services. There's a sample project here. I'm the main author of that project, so this is a shameless plug, but I honestly believe it's lightyears ahead of other projects in terms of usability. The next version will be based on Spring GraphQL, so it should inherit most/all benefits as well (like e.g. RSocket support, which it currently lacks).
There's also DGS by Netflix (com.netflix.graphql.dgs:graphql-dgs-spring-boot-starter). It is also schema-first, has a plenty of features, but is also highly opinionated. I have no first-hand experience with it, but it is well documented, so you should have no problems finding what you need about it.
If you're already using graphql-java-tools (maintained by the Kickstart team), you'll likely want to go for com.graphql-java-kickstart:graphql-spring-boot-starter as they're intended to be used together. I have no clue how actively this project is maintained these days.
I have not used Spring Data before but I've used Hibernate ORM a number of times for MySQL based application. I just don't understand which framework to choose between the two for a MongoDB based application.
I've tried searching for the answer but I can't find the answer which does a comparison between the two in a production environment. Has anyone found problems working with these two frameworks with MongoDB ?
Disclaimer: I am the lead of the Spring Data project, so I'll mostly cover the Spring Data side of things here:
I think the core distinction between the two projects is that the Hibernate OGM team chose to center their efforts around the JPA while the Spring Data team explicitly did not. The reasons are as follows:
JPA is an inherently relational API. The first two sentences of the spec state, that it's an API for object-relational mapping. This is also embodied in core themes of the API: it talks about tables, columns, joins, transactions. Concepts that are not necessarily transferable into the NoSQL world.
You usually choose a NoSQL store because of its special traits (e.g. geospatial queries on MongoDB, being able to execute graph traversals for Neo4j). None of them are (and will be) available in JPA, hence you'll need to provide proprietary extensions anyway.
Even worse, JPA features concepts that will simply guide users into wrong directions if they assume them to work on a NoSQL store like they were defined in JPA: how should a transaction rollback be implemented reasonably on top of a MongoDB?
So with Spring Data, we chose to rather provide a consistent programming model for the supported stores but not try to force everything into a single over-abstracting API: you get the well-known template implementations, you get the repository abstraction, which works identical for all stores but lets you leverage store-specific features and concepts.
Disclaimer: I'm one of the Hibernate OGM developers so I'll try to provide some of the reasons behind it.
Hibernate OGM provides Java Persistence (JPA) support for NoSQL solutions. It reuses Hibernate ORM’s engine but persists entities into a NoSQL datastore instead of a relational database. It also aims to provide access to specific datastore features when JPA does not have a good fit.
This approach is interesting for several reasons:
Known semantic and APIs. Java developers are already familiar with JPA, this means that one won't have to learn lower level API. It also supports both HQL and native backend-queries.
Late backend choice. Choosing the right NoSQL datastore is not trivial. With Hibernate OGM you won't have to commit to a specific NoSQL solution and you will be able to switch and tests different backends easily.
Existing tools and libraries. JPA and Hibernate ORM have been around for a while and you will be able to reuse libraries and tools that uses them underneath.
Most of JPA logical model fits. An example of a good fit is #Embedded, #EmbeddedCollection and #Entity (that can be a node, document or cache based on the datastore of choice). Admittedly, annotation names might be strange because you will also have to deal with #Table and #Column.
JPA abstracts persistence at the object level, leaving room for a lot of tricks and optimizations. We have several ideas planned, like polyglot persistence: storing data in several data stores and use the best one for a specific read job.
The main drawback is that some of the concepts of JPA are not easily mapped to the NoSQL world: transactions for example. While you will have access to transaction demarcation methods, you won't be able to rollback on data stores that don't support transactions natively (transactions, in this case, will be used to group operations and try to optimize the number of calls to the db).
Also, if your dataset is by nature non domain model centric, then Hibernate OGM is not for you.
One can Just go with SpringData. If you recall Spring ORM also uses some JPA things such as Entity, Transaction and provided best commination of things from JPA and Hibernate APIs a. Spring community will take care in future versions if JPA is getting more matured for NoSQL.
Though it is not the main reason. Most of reasons are described by #Oliver Drotbohm.
Read more documentation of SprinData and further analyse your data model, scalability on continuity/growth of data store, find best fit for your solution and consider suggestion given by #Davide.
Many cases SpringData has got more success rate than JPA while integrating with MongoDB.
I m a newbie & i m good at Struts framework. Today i tried a tutorial for Spring MVC Framework.
The example url that i tried following is as below:
http://static.springsource.org/docs/Spring-MVC-step-by-step/part6.html
I think they have made this tutorial much more complex especially near its end. I saw some errors mainly typos in part 5, part 6 of tutorial. I found Spring framework as not properly organized and how would we know what classes to extend especially when their names are so weird (pardon my language) e.g. AbstractTransactionalDataSourceSpringContextTests.
Overall i found that Spring is making things much more complex than it should be. I'm surprised why there is such a hype about Springs being very easy to learn.
any suggestion how to learn spring easily ? how to judge what to extend ? is there a quick reference or something?
The tutorial you have referred to covers all the layers of the application - data access, business logic and web. For someone who is looking to only get a feel of Spring MVC, which addresses concerns specific to the web layer of the application, this could be more information than required. Probably that is why you got the feeling that the tutorial is complex.
To answer your questions, Spring is easy to learn because the whole framework is designed to work with POJOs, instead of relying on special interfaces, abstract classes or such. Developers can write software as normal Java applications - interfaces, classes and enums and use Spring to wire the components up, without having to go out of the way to achieve the wiring. The tutorial you have referred to tries to explain things in a little bit more detail than experienced programmers would typically do in a real application, probably because the authors wanted the readers to get enough insight into how Spring works so that concepts are understood well.
In most applications (regardless of their size or nature), there is typically no need to extend Spring classes or to implement specialised classes. The Spring community is quite large and an even larger ecosystem of readily available components exists that integrate with Spring. It is therefore very rare that one has to implement a Spring component to achieve something. For example, let us take the example of the data access layer. Different teams like using different approaches to accessing databases. Some like raw JDBC, others like third-party ORMs like iBatis or Hibernate while some others like JPA. Spring distributions contain classes to support all these approaches. Similarly, lets say someone was looking to incorporate declarative transaction management in their application. Again, transaction management can be done in many different ways and a large number of transaction management products are available for people to use. Spring integration is available for most of these products, allowing teams to simply choose which product they want to use and configure it in their Spring application.
Recent Spring releases have mostly done away with extensive XML based configuration files, which being external to the Java code did make Spring application a bit cumbersome to understand. Many things can be done nowadays with annotations. For example,
#Controller
public class AuthenticationController
{
...
}
Indicates that AuthenticationController is a web MVC controller class. There are even ways to avoid using the Controller annotation and follow a convention-over-configuration approach to simplify coding even further.
A good and simple tutorial to Spring MVC is available at http://www.vaannila.com/spring/spring-mvc-tutorial-1.html. This tutorial uses XML based configuration for Spring beans instead of annotations but the concepts remain the same.
I have seen tutorial you follow , Its seems you have follow wrong one first , you first tried to simple one, Instead of tutorials you should go for book first
I recommend you two books to understand the power of Spring
spring in action and spring recipes.
For practical you can use STS a special ide for spring project development.Its have some predefined template you dont't need to write whole configuration yourself.
In starting just see simple tutorials like Spring mvc hello world , form controller than go for big ones
Spring is very cool , All the best.