RPA Course Syllabus

Introduction To RPA

• Issues with Persistence layers and Object-Relational Mapping (ORM)
• RPA Overview and Benefits
• RPA architecture overview
• POJO (Plain Old Java Object) Based Mapping

Getting Started With RPA Quickly

• Overview of the RPA distribution
• Configuring RPA
• RPA.cfg.xml file
• SessionFactory configuration
• Connection properties, Database dialect
• Configuration class, Session Interface
• “Hello World” Program for RPA
• Mapping a Class
• Persistent Entity Class, RPA Mapping
• File, Mapping the Entity Class
• Primary keys: Id property, Generated Id
• RPA Type System
• Working with sessions and Persistent Objects
• Logging – log4j Overview and configuration for RPA

Querying

• Inserting and Updating Entities
• HQL – RPA Query Language Overview
• The Query Interface
• Creating and working with queries
• Named Queries, Projection Queries, Aggregate Queries

The Persistence Lifecycle

• Transaction Overview and Transactions in RPA
• RPA Transaction API (in Managed and Non-managed Environments)
• The lifecycle of managed objects
• Persistent, transient, and detached objects
• The Persistence (Session) Context (Lifespan, Relation to Managed Objects, Propagation)
• Contextual Sessions
• Synchronization to the Database
• The Session as cache

Relationships

• Object Relationship Overview
• Mapping Collections of Value Objects
• Entity Relationships: 1-N, N-1, N-N, 1-1
• Mapping Entity Relationships
• Uni and Bi-directional Relationships
• The Relationship “inverse”
• Cascading Over Relationships
• Queries Across Relationships (Lazy and Eager)

Inheritance Mapping

• Entity Inheritance with RPA
• Table-per-class mapping
• Table per Subclass mapping
• Table per Concrete Class mapping

Additional Querying Capabilities

• Projection Queries, Aggregate queries
• Bulk updates and deletes
• Native SQL Queries
• Query Filters

The Criteria API

• Overview of the Criteria API
• Working Querying with the Criteria API
• Query by Example

RPA And Java Persistence / EJB 3

• Overview of Java Persistence / EJB 3
• Relationship between Java Persistence and RPA
• Overview of Annotations
• Mapping Entities with RPA Annotations
• The EntityManager, Persistence Context and Persistence Unit
• Working with Transactions – EntityTransaction, Managed, and Unmanaged Environments
• Inserts and Updates
• JPQL – Java Persistence Query Language
• Versioning
• Relationships

Advanced Topics

• Components and Multi-Table Mapping
• equals() and hashCode()
• Caching and Efficiency
• Design Considerations