EJB query restrictions

An EJB query is compiled into an SQL query and executed against the underlying datastore based on schema mapping of the abstract bean to the datastore schema. The semantics of comparison and arithmetic operations are that of the underlying datastore. In the case of SQL, note that two strings are equal if the shorter string padded with blanks equals the longer string. For example, 'A' is equal to 'A '. This differs from the equality of strings in the Java language. Arithmetic overflow operations are an error in SQL.

A cmp field can not be used in comparison operations or predicates (except for LIKE) if that cmp field is mapped to a long varchar or large objects (LOB) column or any other column type for which the database server does not support predicates or comparison operations.

A cmp field of any type can be used in a SELECT clause. Fields that can be used in predicates, grouping, or ordering operations must be of the types listed below...

• Primitive types : byte, short, int, long, float, double, boolean, char

• Object types: Byte, Short, Integer, Long, Float, Double, BigDecimal, String, Boolean, Char, java.util.Calendar , java.util.Date

• JDBC types: java.sql.Date, java.sql.Time, java.sql.Timestamp

The field must be mapped to a table column that is compatible in type either by using a "top-down" default mapping generated by the WebSphere deploy tool, or using a "meet-in-the-middle" mapping between compatible types.

In order to search on attributes of a cmp field that is a user-defined value object, use a "meet-in-the-middle" mapping and use a composer to map each attribute to a compatible column. The default "top-down" mapping stores the object as a serialized object in a column of type blob, which does not allow searching.

If a cmp field is mapped to a column using a "meet-in-the-middle" mapping with a converter, that field can only be used with the NULL predicate or with basic predicates of the following form

    path-expression  <comparison>  literal_value 
    path-expression  <comparison>  input_parameter

In this situation, the converter method toData( ) is called to convert the right-hand side of the predicate to an SQL value.

Example of allowable predicate on a cmp field with user defined converter

e.name = 'Chris'
e.name > ?1
e.name IS NULL

Examples of unallowable predicates

substring( e.name, 1, 3 ) = 'ABC'
e.salary >  d.budget

A converter should preserve equality, collating sequence and null values when doing a conversion. Otherwise cmp fields created by the converter should not be used in WHERE, GROUP, HAVING or ORDER clauses of a query.

 

See Also

EJB query language
Using EJB query

 

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