1. Preface

All current server side software, ranging from simple shopping carts to Enterprise applications must be capable of handling persistent data. Data that is to be usually saved to/recalled from a relational database. The amount of work, while desgining and coding such an application, which goes into implementing a suitable persistence layer can be quite time consuming. Additionally a software's lifecycle does not end on the first release. Even after it, there are usually a lot of modifications/bugfixes which modify the data model (even when it's well designed), or add to the model (for example when new features are added).

BeanKeeper (formerly NetMind Simple Persistence for Java) is an O/R (object/relation) mapping library. It's task is to map java objects (and their relations to eachother) to a relational database, and to offer a powerful query service to retrieve them.

To do this, the library attempts to take all responsibilities regarding storing an object from the developer. This means, other than pointing the library to a usable database, no configuration is required to access all features of the library. Not while developing the application, nor while maintaining, updating the object model, or adding new classes or relations.

This documentation will guide you through all functions of this library and introduces you to the internal workings, if you care (you don't have to know that, if you are using the library).

Additional information can be found on the website: http://netmind.hu/beankeeper. There is also a mailing list. Information how to subscribe are contained on the site.

This document was generated by Robert Brautigam on November, 21 2009 using texi2html 1.78.