Tag Archives: oo

DejaVu : Web Services!

For the un-initiated, I am working on my lesser liked topics in the programming world, JS and WS!

I had recently started appreciating the WS without XML/Annotations a few weeks back, but to my surprise, the XFire implementation is no more supported in Spring 3.x hence I had to fall back on XML and Annotations.

I could come up with a working example of contract first WS development from here, and I was happy to see things working as expected, except for the inherent pain of seeing and using XML/Annotations.

This made me re-visit my understanding of whether to use java-first or wsdl-first approach for development.

I was initially a supporter of java-first simply due to my dis-liking for XML, now it seems a wsdl-first approach can keep the concentration of implementation towards the data structure of the messages that go to-and-fro.

That said, if I develop a java-first implementation, and give the 3rd party implementation team the link to the wsdl, does the 3rd party implementor stand to loose anything?

Either way’s even if they are using something other than java to consume the services, they have to wrap the response as per their conveneince, the only tradeoff that I seem to have is the structure of the wsdl message is not the fundamental change item, but the java method arguments become the items that define/control the change.

The only flexibility that I might be loosing here is the power of functional programming language, as-in imagine if a functional programmer implements a wsdl as per my current understanding, I question, does that programmers changing of the wsdl based on the arguments that come and go, affect(ease/pains) my implementation?

To conclude, do I stand to loose anything if I *still* go the java-first implementation way?

Your thoughts?

~rohit.

The New Service Layer Architecture.

2 Comments

I have been associated with 3 major softwares that were developed for corporates and large businesses. In each of them, I had seen somewhat common layered architecture where either a facade layer exists for the flow or did not.One of the three architectures had a dedicated facade layer on top of the service/business flows. Incidently it was the only application that was designed for the web.

That could be the reason where the architect might have envisioned mashups of business objects that might be requested from the client side.This decision seemed to be motivated by the controlled requests coming from the web vs the uncontrolled calls on a desktop application.But then, the speed with which the desktop applications have also started gaining back popularity since the past couple of years, it might not be incorrect to assume that the architecture of a web and a desktop application should overlap.The desktop applications are becoming more and more responsive and with an expert user the desktop application demand more challenging screens as compared to web applications.

It is with these understandings I propose the following layered architecture:
The core difference lies in the way the business service calls are divided into two sub layers namely:
1/Facade layer.:: Responsible for mashed-up/secondary business object screens.
2/Business Service layer.:: Responsible for manipulation of core business objects screens.

The process layer calls can go directly to the service layer and also can talk to the facade layer also.

For example, consider the problem domain of bicycles, where we are writing an application for selling of bicycles.

For the initial iteration, the service layer would be enough to cater to the needs of operations like getting a quote of bicycle from different sources, getting different color models, different frame sizes etc.

Later on the application owner might want to move to custom built bicycles where the complete bicycle is not the single object that is passed across the process and service layers, as wheels, frames,handle-bars,seat-posts all start bringing in different compositions for the custom build bicycle.
In this scenario, the facade would be a great place to assemble different parts of the bicycle bind them together and return to the process as the complete bicycle object.
Even later on when the bicycle sub parts are further broken down like the wheel composition can give multiple options to choose from, this structure can be extended further.

Some might argue that the facade layer can exist at the same level as the service layer. Quite true, but over a period of time when the service layer gets fat with lots and lots of business specific code being written, the objects that go in and out of this layer becomes unclear, as to the core set of objects around which the whole application revolves. This loss of focus from the core objects of functionality can result in a loss of a perspective in writing new code/flow for the application, the consequences of which can be differently dangerous in varied scenarios.

To conclude,I like this layout because:

1/ It keeps a unique object being passed across layers.

2/Multiple Do’s and Do not Do’s from design perspective get constrained for the developer.

3/Gives greater and cleaner objectivity to the flow of the objects in the complete application.The service layer can be controlled as one that caters to core business and the one that is responsible for supported objects.

4/Easy refactoring capabilities and pluggable architecture.

Is it fair to partition the service layer on primary objects?Does it limit the growth of the application(and business itself)?

What do you think?

Look Maa! No Tables Only Objects!

6 Comments

Databases are one topic that I have never had a chance to get deeper insights.

I started JDBC’ing when later I was surprised to know that one could connect to the database using ‘C’.

I had not worked enough to feel the pain of iterating over ResultSet and writing insert/update scripts that virtually went outside the screen when I saw the onset of “Hibernate-Relational Persistence for Idiomatic Java”. I never liked the writing/seeing/understanding XML, but I had no choice but to Well Hmmm!

And with most of the time spent in Hibernate, I never felt its features were intuitive to that of Java(in no specific order).

  • First and foremost in Java, Enum are first class citizens, in Hibernate, working with an Enum is not at all trivial.
  • Using composite keys asks you to maintain a seperate object for it.
  • Already there were two worlds of entities in Application(objects) and entities in DB(records), now to understand the two, one needed to know how Hibernate understands the two worlds.

For simple applications, Hibernate is way to work with, but with very large applications, I did not like the complexity that it brought in atleast two occasions, requiring extra time to keep the DB and the hbm files in sync.
It could be the incorrect way of not completely relying on hbm for schema generation, but because these applications had predefined schema’s, this was the only possible safe-path.

Issues with RDBMS:

  • Application<---->Mapping<---->DB
  • Cost of mapping conversion(second level cache’s are not enough!)
  • Transactions duplicates Locking- In general.

Tired of looking at xml, and with the option to write an application for fun, I have the option to evaluate the usage of Object Oriented Database.
I had found atleast a dozen implementation of such software, at the end it came down to db4o and Perst. And here is the summary of them:

db4o

  • Most commonly used OODBMS.
  • Easy to learn.
  • Supports intuitive Refactoring of persistent classes.
  • Support for Projections is not available(could not find).
  • Lazy initialization supported with default level of depth.

Perst

  • Has GIS Dataset
  • Fastest amongst all OODBMS.
  • Cryptic creation of indices for faster search.
  • Concept of Links for references pollutes domain.
  • No fixed DTD for import/export feature for refactoring.

Both the products have the following in common:

  • Support for Transactions.
  • Zero mismatch between object and saved data.
  • Confusing Licence!

At the end, I have to give in to db4o for simplicity and refactoring features.
And that’s where I would start looking at injecting it into the application.

Concerns about OODBMS:

  • Not Yet widely used – I wonder why?
  • Clustering – I do not need it.
  • Backup – RDBMS or File?
  • Optimization – Exotic feature than a requirement.

So I would look forward to working on the application on db4o and will update on the findings!

~rohit.