DeciBell     :   A Novell Approach to the ORM Problem for Java.


    	              Charalampos Chomenides, Sopasakis Pantelis


keywords:   Relational Databases, ORM, Java Programming, JDBC, SQL.

Abstract
  DeciBell is an open  source tool  developed  to tackle in a uniform and  structured way 
the problem of Java and  SQL cooperation. In  DeciBell, Java  classes are related to rela-
tional  database  entities  automatically  and in  a transparent  way as far as  the back-
ground operations are concerned. So, on the one hand, non-expert users  can  work on Java 
code exclusively  while an expert one will  be able to focus on more  algorithmic aspects 
of the problem he/she tries to solve rather than with trivial database management issues. 
In contrast to the  existing ORM  programs,  DeciBell does not require any  configuration 
files or  composite query structures,  but only a proper annotation of  certain fields of 
the classes.  This annotation is carried  out by means of the Java Annotations which is a 
modern trend in Java programming. Among its supported features, DeciBell supports primary 
keys (single and multiple), foreign keys, constraints, one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-
to-many relations.  Finally DeciBell  translates the  hierarchical  relationships between 
Java objects into table structure.

Source Code Dependencies:
1. Derby JDBC server:
   The  Derby JDBC server is freely distributed  under the Apache license. DeciBell  makes 
   use of the transitional alpha release of Derby 10.6.0. but will soon upgrade to the la-
   test release 10.6.1 ( see http://wiki.apache.org/db-derby/DerbyTenSixOneRelease )
2. Reflections:
   Reflections  is an  opensource/free java metadata  analysis software  distributed under  
   the GNU Lesser GPL license. Project web page @ http://code.google.com/p/reflections.
3. XStream:
   Library for the (de)serialization of objects  in Java to and from  XML. It is  used in
   DeciBell for registering in the database non-Component objects of unknown structure.It
   is an open source software distributed under a BSD license. XStream is available for 
   download at http://xstream.codehaus.org .