Data access for Faces components

In addition to other data access methods available for Faces components, you can use a powerful data access technology called Service Data Objects (SDO).

Traditionally, there are several data access methods from which you can choose when developing your Web application. You can use Enterprise Java beans (EJB) or direct data source access (such as JDBC). These methods require an understanding of EJB's and data source access, as well as substantial development overhead. Though these methods are useful when creating object-oriented, persistence-capable applications, Web applications often require a simpler data access method.

A data wizard can generate a Web application that accesses data in a relational database. This wizard offers several different code generation patterns; however, these patterns rely on data beans that were not originally designed to support the disconnected request-response patterns that work best with JSP pages. If you want to make use of JavaServer Faces technology, you create Faces JSP pages in your Web application; therefore, applications that use Faces components require a data access method that supports the disconnected model optimized for the Web.

To solve this problem, and offer a simpler paradigm with the Faces components, a convenient and robust data access technology is available called Service Data Objects (WDO) (referred to as WDO for WebSphere Application Server version 5.x). SDO allows you to avoid persistent objects altogether and deal exclusively with data.

You can still use other data access methods with Faces components, including data access beans and Web services. However, Faces components are optimized for use with the SDO data access structure. Note that SDO data sources are created automatically for you when you define data sources on Faces JSP pages.

 

Related concepts

Data access with SDO
JavaServer Faces
Generated Web pages

 

Related tasks

Adding components to Faces JSP pages
Deploying a Web project that uses SDO
Adding a relational record list to a Faces JSP page
Adding a relational record to a Faces JSP page