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Concepts Guide

# Using Service Data Objects (SDO)

This section describes the Data Services Platform (DSP) client-side application programming object model, Service Data Objects (SDO). The following topics are covered:

- Introducing Service Data Objects
- Getting Data Objects
- An Initial Look at SDO Programming
- Data Updates

# Introducing Service Data Objects

SDO is a Java-based data programming model and architecture for accessing and updating data. SDO is defined in a joint specification proposed by BEA and IBM (JSR 235). SDO is intended to give applications an easy-to-use, uniform programming model for accessing and updating data, regardless of the underlying source or format of the data.

Unlike existing data access technologies such as JDO or JDBC, SDO specifies both a static and a dynamic interfaces for accessing data. The static (or strongly typed) interface gives client developers an easy-to-use, update-capable model for accessing values. A static interface function is in the form:

>     	getCUSTOMERNAME()

As implied by the sample function name, to use the static interface the developer must know the types of the data (that is, CUSTOMERNAME) at development time. If the types are unknown at development time, the developer can use the dynamic (or loosely typed) interface. Such calls are in the form:

>     	cust.get("CUSTOMERNAME")

A dynamic interface is useful when the data type is not known or defined at development time and is particularly useful for creating programming tools and frameworks across data source types.

In addition to a programming interface, SDO defines a data programming architecture. A component of this architecture called the mediator serves as the adapter between the client and data source. A mediator specializes in exchanging data with the data source. It knows how to retrieve data from a particular source and pass changes back to it. Data is passed in a datagraph, which consists of a graph of data objects.

As mentioned in the SDO specification, a particular SDO implementation is likely to have specialized mediators for particular source types, such as for databases. DSP provides a data service mediator that resides between SDO clients and the data integration layer.

With SDO, clients use data in an essentially stateless, disconnected fashion. When Data Services Platform gets data from a source, such as a database, it acquires one or more database connections only long enough to retrieve the data. Once the data is acquired, DSP releases the connections. The client works on a local copy of the data, disconnected from the data source.

The network is accessed again only when the client wants to apply the data changes to the source. Disconnected data access contributes to a scalable, efficient computing environment because back-end system resources are never tied up for very long.

Optimistic concurrency rules are used to ensure the integrity of data when updates occur. With optimistic concurrency, data at the data source is not locked while a client works with it. Instead, if updates are made to the data, potential conflicts (such as other clients changing the same data after the client got it) are detected when the data updates or propagated back to the sources.

For complete information on Service Data Objects, including the specification and Javadoc, go to:

>     http://dev2dev.bea.com/technologies/commonj/sdo/index.jsp

## Getting Data Objects

Data Services Platform uses SDO as its client-side programming model. Simply put, this means that when a Java client invokes a data service's read function — either through the DSP Mediator API or through the Workshop Data Service control — it gets a return value in the form of an SDO data object. A data object is the fundamental component in the SDO programming model. It represents a unit of structured information, with static and dynamic interfaces for getting and setting its data values.

# An Initial Look at SDO Programming

This section introduces you to SDO programming through a small code sample. The sample shows how SDO provides a simple, easy to use client-side data programming model.

The sample is written against the data service shown in Figure 5-1.

Figure 5-1 Data Service Design View

The data type for the Customer data service is CUSTOMER. A data type is a structured XML document known as a schema. In this example the data type is composed of properties such as customer ID, name, and orders. The data for a CUSTOMER instance comes from four other data services: CUSTOMERS, PO_CUSTOMERS, PO_ITEMS, and getCustomerCredit. Physically each of these is an XQuery document with a `.ds` extension (example: `PO_CUSTOMERS.ds`).

The sample Customer data service has several methods for getting data type instances, including getCustomer(), getCustomerById(), getPaymentList(), and so on. The function getPaymentList() is a navigation function. It does not return a CUSTOMER document; instead it returns data from a data service for which a logical relationship has been defined. In the case of getPaymentList(), the related data service named PAYMENTS returns the payment history for a given customer.

The navigation function makes it easy for client applications to acquire additional related data that is likely to be of interest when working with CUSTOMER documents. With the same data service handle used to get a customer, they can get that customer's list of payments.

The result is code that is concise, readable and easy to maintain, as shown in Listing 5-1.

Listing 5-1 SDO Sample

>     import java.util.Hashtable;
>     import javax.naming.Context;
>     import javax.naming.InitialContext;
>     import com.bea.ld.dsmediator.client.*;
>     import org.openuri.temp.schemas.customer.CUSTOMERDocument;

>     public class myCust {
>        public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
>           Hashtable h = new Hashtable();
>           h.put(Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY,
>           "weblogic.jndi.WLInitialContextFactory");
>           h.put(Context.PROVIDER_URL,"t3://localhost:7001");
>           h.put(Context.SECURITY_PRINCIPAL,"weblogic");
>           h.put(Context.SECURITY_CREDENTIALS,"weblogic");

>           DataService ds = XmlDataServiceFactory.newXmlService(
>                     new InitialContext(h),
>                     "Demo",
>                     "ld:DataServices/Customer");
>           Object arg[]={new Integer("987655")};
>           CUSTOMERDocument myCustomer =
>                     (CUSTOMERDocument) ds.invoke("getCustomer",arg);
>           myCustomer.getCUSTOMER().setCUSTOMERNAME("BigCo, Inc");
>           ds.submit(myCustomer,"ld:DataServices/Customer");
>           System.out.println(" Customer information: \n" + myCustomer);
>        }
>     }

Notice that once the proper packages have been imported and the initial context to the server has been made, in about five lines of code the client application:

- Gets data from four different data sources.
- Modifies a value (customer name).
- Submits the change, which propagates from Data Services Platform through SDO to to the data sources.

The complexity of this entire procedure is hidden from the client application developer. Instead, the complexity is handled at the data services layer and by the DSP framework.

# Data Updates

As it does for reading data, SDO gives client applications a unified interface for updating data. With DSP, client application can modify and update data from heterogeneous, distributed sources as if the data were from a single entity. The complexity of propagating changes to diverse data sources is hidden from the client programmer.

Data source updates occur in a transactionally secure manner; that is, given an update call that affects multiple sources, all updates to individual data sources within the update call either succeed or fail together. (Note that it is possible to override this behavior as needed.)

From the data service implementor's point of view, the task of building a library of update-capable data services is considerably eased by the DSP update framework. For relational sources, DSP can often propagate changes to the data sources automatically. For other sources, or to customize relational updates, you can use the DSP update framework and tools to quickly implement a wide range of update-capable services.

As shown in the Figure 5-2, updates occur through a process in which the requested change is first analyzed to determine, among other things, the lineage of the data. The DSP mediator then decomposes the submitted object into its constituent parts and propagates the changes to the data source.

At any point in this process, you can have your own code programmatically intervene, for example, to validate the update values or for auditing purposes.

For more information on updates, see the Data Services Platform Application Developer's Guide.

Figure 5-2 Data Services Platform Source Update Sequence