Java/Android SQL Helper Class Why drop the table when upgrading? - java

For the majority of the examples and tutorials I have seen it is always suggesting to execute SQL to Delete the table if it exists in the onUpgrade method.
Why would you want to delete the table as this would remove all the data, would it not be better to just replace the old DB version with the new version?
This would something that I could not understand and no where online outlined the reason.
Thanks
| Sam |

For simplicity. Dropping the old version and recreating a new version is simple and straightforward, though also destructive. In many cases, data loss like this is not a concern at development time.
Writing proper data migration code would be a topic for another example/tutorial as it inherently involves at least two versions of the database schema and thus the database helper. Including migration example in a simple do-this-to-get-started tutorial would just add unnecessary complexity.

Because they are tutorials: they assume you have no valuable data in them (or no data at all). In that case, the easiest way to upgrade a schema is to remove old tables and creating the new ones.
Don't take in mind it, you are right.

Related

Alternatives to DDLUtils from apache

I would like to know which alternatives exist to replace DDL utils from Apache.
I ask this because ddlutils project seams to be Dead, and also it does not support H2 Databases. I've searched for it, and I found suggestions like liquidbase or flyway.
My problem is: These frameworks run when project starts and change DB structure based on some XML files. They are really designed for Database Migration.
What I want is a framework to CREATE/ALTER Tables in Runtime, in a high abstraction level., i.e. supportting at least Mysql, Sqlserver, oracle, and H2.
For example I could tell to the engine that I want to create a table with a Field AGE with Type Number, and the framework would rephrase to:
create table MY( id bigint(20))
create table MY(id bigint)
create table MY (id, number)
depending on the underlying db engine.
Any suggestions?
I could see there is a patch for ddlutils, for it to support H2. However I wasn't able to patch my svn checkout...
Any help will be appreciated.
thanks in advance
rui
I know this is an old thread, but wanted to give a definitive answer.
Yes, DdlUtils is dead, hasn't seen an update in 2 years now.
However, it looks like the guys might have switched over to https://www.symmetricds.org. Their repo is https://github.com/JumpMind/symmetric-ds.
As soon as you scratch away at the surface, you'll find that the core of DdlUtils is still in there (even has some of the old Apache copyright notices).
Class names have changed, APIs have changed so there is not a 1-to-1 mapping, but it is getting regular updates and includes H2 and other database support. Honestly I'd rather be getting those things instead of keeping the old APIs.
You're not going to find a guide on using Symmetric DS in the same way as the old DdlUtils doco, but there is enough in the code that you should be able to piece it together.
Take a look on jOOQ it is very useful in generating DDL (and DML too)
create.createTable("table")
.column("column1", INTEGER)
.column("column2", VARCHAR(10).nullable(false))
.constraints(
constraint("pk").primaryKey("column1"),
constraint("uk").unique("column2"),
constraint("fk").foreignKey("column2").references("some_other_table"),
constraint("ck").check(field(name("column2")).like("A%"))
)
.execute();
This looks promising: https://bitbucket.org/aragot/play-sql-dialects/src
At least as a start.
Mogwai ERD designer might help though they do not formally support H2 but you could put H2 into compatibility mode with one of the supported DB systems: https://sourceforge.net/p/mogwai

Using App Fuse to generate CRUD operations directly from database schema

I was told that one can generate CRUD operations directly form the database schema using app fuse. But I was unsuccessful in doing that using it and it look very long without any clue.
One possibility is to create the models and annotate it and create CRUDs and create database tables and also populate them with dummy variables. But is it possible to do it other way round.
I have been following this tutorial provided from App Fuse. Am I doing it wrong or is it possible.
Thanks
I would try using appfuse:gen-model:
http://static.appfuse.org/plugins/appfuse-maven-plugin/gen-model-mojo.html
Note, that AppFuse isn't great at creating relationships between classes, so you might have to do some work after it generates the code. You also might try searching the user mailing list archives:
http://appfuse.547863.n4.nabble.com/AppFuse-User-f547864.html

Are there any samples for appengine Java report generation?

We are using AppEngine and the datastore for our application where we have a moderately large table of information containing a list with entries.
I would like to summarize the list of entries in a report specifying how many times each one appears e.g. normally in SQL I would just use a select distinct for a column, then loop over every entry and just use select count(x) where value = valueOfEntry.
While the count portion is easily done, the distinct problem is "a problem". The only solution I could find remotely close to this is MapReduce and most of the samples are based on Python. There is this blog entry which is very helpful but somewhat outdated since it predated the reduce portion. Then there is the video here and a few more resources I was able to find.
However, its really hard for me to understand how to build he summary table if I can't write to a separate entity and I don't have a reduce stage?
This seems like something trivial and simple to accomplish but requires so many hoops, is there no sample or existing reporting engine I can just plugin to AppEngine without all the friction?
I saw BigQuery, but it seems like a huge hassle to move the data out of app engine and into that store. I tried downloading the data as CSV but ran into many issues with that as well. It doesn't seem like a practical solution in the long run either.
There is a document explaining some of the concepts of the mapreduce for java. Although it is incomplete, it shares most of the architecture with the python version. In that document, there's also a pointer to a complete java sample mapreduce app, that reads from the datastore.
For writing the results, you specify an Output class. To write the results to a new datastore entity you would need to create your own Output Class. But you could also use the blobstore (see BlobFileOutput.java).
Other alternative, is that whenever you write one of your entities, you also write/update another entry to a EntityDistinct data model.
If you plan on performing complex reports and you can anticipate all your needs now, I would suggest you to look again at Big Query. BigQuery is really powerful and works perfectly on very massive datasets. You can inspect http://code.google.com/p/log2bq/ which is a python project that loads the logs into Big Query using mapreduce. Or you could also have a cron job, that every once in a while fetches all new entities and moves them into Big Query.
Related to the friction, remember that this is a no-sql database, and as such has some advantages but some things are inherently different to SQL. Remember you can always use Google Cloud SQL, given that your dataset is of limited size, but you would loose the replication and fault-tolerant capabilities.
I think this could help you: http://jjmpsj.blogspot.ro/2008/05/appengine-output-tricks-reporting.html?m=1

Is it possible to save persistent objects to the file system

I'd like to save persistent objects to the file system using Hibernate without the need for a SQL database.
Is this possible?
Hibernate works on top of JDBC, so all you need is a JDBC driver and a matching Hibernate dialect.
However, JDBC is basically an abstraction of SQL, so whatever you use is going to look, walk and quack like an SQL database - you might as well use one and spare yourself a lot of headaches. Besides, any such solution is going to be comparable in size and complexity to lighweight Java DBs like Derby.
Of course if you don't insist absolutely on using Hibernate, there are many other options.
It appears that it might technically be possible if you use a JDBC plaintext driver; however I haven't seen any opensource ones which provide write access; the one I found on sourceforge is read-only.
You already have an entity model, I suppose you do not want to lose this nor the relationships contained within it. An entity model is directed to be translated to a relational database.
Hibernate and any other JPA provider (EclipseLink) translate this entity model to SQL. They use a JDBC driver to provide a connection to an SQL database. This, you need to keep as well.
The correct question to ask is: does anybody know an embedded Java SQL database, one that you can start from within Java? There are plenty of those, mentioned in this topic:
HyperSQL: stores the result in an SQL clear-text file, readily imported into any other database
H2: uses binary files, low JAR file size
Derby: uses binary files
Ashpool: stores data in an XML-structured file
I have used HyperSQL on one project for small data, and Apache Derby for a project with huge databases (2Gb and more). Apache Derby performs better on these huge databases.
I don't know exactaly your need, but maybe it's one of below:
1 - If your need is just run away from SQL, you can use a NoSQL database.
Hibernate suports it through Hibernate OGM ( http://www.hibernate.org/subprojects/ogm ).
There are some DBs like Cassandra, MongoDB, CouchDB, Hadoop... You have some suggestions Here
.
2 - Now, if you want not to use a database server (with a service process running always), you can use Apache Derby. It's a DB just like any other SQL, but no need of a server. It uses a singular file to keep data. You can easily transport all database with your program.
Take a look: http://db.apache.org/derby/
3 - If you really want some text plain file, you can do like Michael Borgwardt said. But I don't know if Hibernate would be a good idea in this case.
Both H2 and HyperSQL support embedded mode (running inside your JVM instead of in a separate server) and saving to local file(s); these are still SQL databases, but with Hibernate there's not many other options.
Well, since the question is still opened and the OP said he's opened to new approaches/suggestions, here's mine (a little late but ok).
Do you know Prevayler? It's a Java Prevalence implementation which keep all of your business objects in RAM and mantain Snapshots/Changelogs in the File System, this way it's extremely fast and reliable, since if there's any crash, it'll restore it's last state and reapply every change to it.
Also, it's really easy to setup and run in your app.
Ofcourse this is possible, You can simply use file io features of Java, following steps are required:-
Create a File Object
2.Create an object of FileInputStream (though there are ways which use other Classes)
Wrap this object in a Buffer object or simply inside a java.util.Scanner.
use specific write functions of the object created in previous step.
Note that your object must implement Serializable interface. See following link,

Dashboard Application

I have a simple task that I feel there has to be an app out there for (or is easy to build or extend an open-source version).
I need to run a mysql query repeatedly and look for changes in the results between runs (the data is coming in in real time).
I have built several of these queries and throughout the day find myself jumping between tabs in my mysql client running them, and trying to see what has changed. This becomes difficult as there are hundreds of rows of data and you can't remember the previous values easily.
Ideally I could have a simple app (or web app) that stores the query, and refreshes over and over again. As the data is filled into the table it could compare the old results and change the color to red or green (or something).
I would need sorting, and simple filtering (possibly with string replaces into the query based on the inputs.
We run Ubuntu at work and I have tried doing this via terminal scripts (we use Ruby), but I feel a more-visual output would give me better results.
Googling around I see several for-pay apps, but there has to be something out there to do this.
I don't mind coding one up, but I don't like to re-invent the wheel if I don't have to.
Many thanks!
For simple things like this you are not reinventing the wheel as much as making your own sandwich -- some things don't make much sense to buy. Just build the simplest web page possible (e.g. a table with the table names you are interested in and maybe a timestamp for the last time it was checked. Have some javascipt run your query and color the cells based on the change you are looking for...repeating this operation as needed. I could give you more specific info if you can tell me how the data changes...more entries into a table? Updates to existing data?
I often use JDBC servlets via Tomcat for this. Here's an excellent tutorial and a very simple example.
I've done something similar in the past using Excel. Just build a connected spreadsheet, make your queries and the result will be outputed to Excel, then you format the way you like it. Very flexible, and if you need some kind of logic beyond the query itself, there are always Excel's built in functions and VBA.
Here is a useful link to help you. It is very simple:
http://port25.technet.com/archive/2007/04/10/connecting-office-applications-to-mysql-and-postgresql-via-odbc.aspx

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