http://www.avaje.org/topic-142.html

I have started a forum topic on the subject of Simplifying Ebean Internals by Removing MapBean fuctionality and DB meta data use.

I'm considering an idea to simplify Ebean internals. This would potentially involve removing the MapBean functionality. If you are using the MapBean functionality and don't want it removed can you please let me know - thanks.

In
terms of simplifying Ebean internals... the idea is to re-evaluate the
use of DB meta data. The initial thoughts is that with a couple of
changes ... the need for using the DB meta data is removed (and it
becomes hard to justify keeping it).

The two main things required to do this (at this stage) is

1)
use @NotNull and @Length validation annotations (or
@Column(nullable=false...) annotation). This is generally required by
Ebean to determine the join types (inner/outer). In a sense having
@NotNull etc could be a good/best practice moving forward as it enables
bean validation frameworks etc).

2) use naming convention for
finding the Foreign Key columns (like the JPA spec but
pluggable/configurable)... rather than Ebean finding these via the DB
meta data. Most people are going to have a decent naming convention so
this should not be that bad.

The benefit of this is that the DB
meta data code can all be removed from Ebean (a reasonably complex bit
of work). In the long term keeping everything as simple as possible is
important which is why I'm thinking about this (and leaning towards
doing this).<<

If you any thoughts on this I'd like to hear them... (I'd prefer feedback in the google group rather than the forum).

Thanks, Rob.