Session bean implementation of a system, method and software for creating or maintaining distributed transparent persistence of complex data objects and their data relationships

Abstract

The invention provides systems, methods and software for creating or maintaining distributed transparent persistence of complex data objects and associated data stores. In one aspect, the invention also relates to an application programming object capable of creating or maintaining distributed transparent persistence of data objects or data object graphs without the necessity of inserting any byte codes or modification of the object graph. Virtually any java object or object graph can be transparently persisted. Further, copies of a data graph or of a portion of the data graph can be automatically reconciled and changes persisted without any persistence coding in the object model.

1 . A system for creating or maintaining transparent persistence of a member selected from the group consisting of a data object, an object graph model and a portion of an object graph model when a user of the system is creating, maintaining, accessing or navigating complex data objects as a CDOG model, comprising: 
 a) a set of definitions for the relationships between a data source schema and objects capable of sotring data for an object language application, wherein the set of definitions is stored in a repository;    b) a set of definitions for the relationships between objects for an object language application,    c) an object name, a list of objects, or a set of objects that are to be persisted,    d) an object or set of objects as a programming module that contains logic capable of persisting an indicated object or set of objects,    e) an input method to inform the programming module of d) with the location of information related to a), b) and c), and    f) at least one data source to which persisted data may be stored.    
   
   
       2 . A system according to  claim 1 , that does not require any modifications to an object model or the inclusion of any persistence byte code in the object model in order to provide persistence for all or a portion of the CDOG model.  
   
   
       3 . A system according to  claim 2 , that provides persistence for a CDOG model on a distributed network environment.  
   
   
       4 . A system for creating or maintaining transparent persistence of a member selected from the group consisting of a data object, an object graph model and a portion of an object graph model when a user of the system is creating, maintaining, accessing or navigating complex data objects as a CDOG model, wherein d) comprises a generic ejb stateful session bean.  
   
   
       5 . A system according to  claim 1 , that does not require any modifications to an object model or the inclusion of any persistence byte code in the object model in order to provide persistence for all or a portion of the CDOG model, wherein d) comprises a generic ejb stateful session bean.  
   
   
       6 . A system according to  claim 2 , that provides persistence for a CDOG model on a distributed network environment, wherein d) comprises a generic ejb stateful session bean.  
   
   
       7 . A software module, or set of modules, for creating or maintaining transparent persistence of a member selected from the group consisting of a data object, an object graph model and a portion of an object graph model when a user of the system is creating, maintaining, accessing or navigating complex data objects as a CDOG model, comprising: 
 i) a software module for creating a set of definitions for the relationships between a data source schema and its stored data to objects in a object language application,    ii) a software module for creating set of definitions for the relationships between objects in an object language application,    iii) a software module providing an input means for an object name, a list of objects, or a set of objects that are to be persisted,    iv) a software module containing the programming logic to persist an object or set of objects based upon access to (a) a set of definitions for the relationships between a data source schema and objects capable of storing data for an object language application, (b) a set of definitions for the relationships between objects for an object language application, and (c) an object name, a list of objects, or a set of objects that are to be persisted, and    v) a software module having an input method to inform iv) of the location of the information related to iv)(a), iv(b) and iv(c).    
   
   
       8 . A software module, or set of modules, according to  claim 7 , for creating or maintaining transparent persistence of a member selected from the group consisting of a data object, an object graph model and a portion of an object graph model when a user of the system is creating, maintaining, accessing or navigating complex data objects as a CDOG model, comprising software code for generating, accessing, or maintaining a generic ejb stateful session bean object as part of the software module of iv).  
   
   
       9 . A software module, or set of modules, according to  claim 7 , that does not require any modifications to an object model or the inclusion of any persistence byte code in the object model in order to provide persistence for all or a portion of the CDOG model, comprising software code for generating, accessing, or maintaining a generic ejb stateful session bean object as iv).  
   
   
       10 . A software module, or set of modules, according to  claim 9 , that provides persistence for a CDOG model on a distributed network environment.  
   
   
       11 . A software module, or set of modules, according to  claim 9 , that further comprises software logic providing to a user the ability to query against the CDOG model or object graph using an object query facility or syntax.  
   
   
       12 . A method according to  claim 11 , wherein the object query facility utilizes EJB-QL query syntax or similar syntax.  
   
   
       13 . A method according to  claim 12 , wherein the object query facility utilizes the EJB-QL query syntax.  
   
   
       14 . A method according to  claim 11 , wherein the object query facility utilizes a query syntax similar to a EJB-QL query syntax and including expanded functions not provided by EJB-QL querying.