Re: [ebxml-dev] DB mapping

[Andrzej Jan Taramina <andrzej@chaeron.com>]

Vladimir inquired:

>  Is there any reasonable mapping algorithm for automatic transformation of
>  entites stored in relatinoal DB into entites stored at Object-Oriented
>  DB?

Yes....it's called Object to Relational Mapping (O/R Mapping) and there are a 
number of excellent commercial and open source tools out there that do just 
this.

TopLINK is one of the best products for this....and is now part of Oracle's kit 
bag.  I believe you can get a free download.  It's a very powerful tool that can 
meet the needs of commercial systems, but the caveat is that the learning 
curve can be steep.  With power comes complexity, typically.

Another is CocoBase.  I've heard good things about it as well.

There is an open source solution called Castor that builds on the Sun JDO 
specification.  My partner and I used this in our Mobile GPS Demo Platform 
(MGDP) project (details on that at http://www.chaeron.com/gps.html for those 
that want a break from B2B/ebXML....some kewl hardware in this project).

So as you can see...there are a number of good solutions to this problem 
space.

None of them typically use "automatic" mapping.  That typically results in poor 
mappings and even worse performance.  All of these tools require that 
someone knowledgeable about both the relational and object sides can create 
the mapping information.  But after that, the process of persisting objects is 
pretty much transparent and "automatic".

Hope this helps...

Andrzej Jan Taramina
Chaeron Corporation: Enterprise System Solutions
http://www.chaeron.com