Today, Farata Systems has released a new version of the free Eclipse plugin Clear Data Builder 3.1. This version includes a new feature – CRUD generation based on Java DTO without the need to provide SQL.

Dr. Victor Rasputnis, Managing Director of Farata Systems explains, "During the beta testing of Clear Data Builder (CDB) 3.0  we’ve fixed a couple of  bugs. Now it properly works with Oracle stored procedures returning result sets. This version of CDB has no issues with case-sensitive databases (i.e. Sybase). But the main reason of the version upgrade from 3.0 to 3.1 is a new feature  now CDB does not need to know anything about the data persistence layer.  It generates the front end for a CRUD application based on the Java Data Transfer Object  a.k.a. Value Object.

Pretty often,  Flex communicates with POJO that does not directly connects to DBMS using JDBC. The enterprises may use some object-relational frameworks, Web Services or any other means of working with data. Due to multiple requests from our customers , Clear Data Builder 3.1 includes a new feature – CRUD generation without the need to use SQL.

In this mode, CDB requires manually written Java class that implements Assembler design pattern similarly to how it’s done in LCDS data management services.  The fill() method of such a class will return a collection of Java Data Transfer Objects (DTO), and the sync() method would receive a collection of ChangeObjects that can be examined by Java code to perform data creation, modification or removal.

We've recorded  a short screencast explaining how CDB generates a sample Flex/Java CRUD application based on a provided Java DTO.  Description of this process is available over here. Since this process is decoupled from accessing data storage, Java developers will be responsible to write the code for  the data persistence and retrieval.

There are several benefits of using CDB for DTO-based code generation :

1.    CDB automatically keeps track of all the changes made by the user and maintains a collection of the ChangeObjects.
2.    CDB automatically generates Flex code utilizing remoting using AMF protocol. As a part of this process, it automatically generates ActionScript DTO’s based on their Java peers (this can be done on any code modification)
3.    Test applications generated by CDB utilize components from clear.swc component library, which gives you richer components and simplified data form processing.
4.    ANT build and deployment scripts are automatically generated for the selected application server."

You can download the User Guide of Clear Data Builder 3.1  at  http://www.myflex.org/documentation/CDB3.pdf. Clear Data Builder 3.1 is available for  free at http://www.myflex.org.