Developing API w/Spring and Hibernate - how to package?

[jbetancourt]

bryanhunt:

Cool stuff!

Question: We are using our simple implementation of Preferences (pre 1.4), but now that we are finally moving to 1.4 we can use the 'standard'. However, we need the pref to come from the database (legacy requirements and cluster issues). Do you by chance know of an extension of Preferences that uses a db backing store? I'd hate to reinvent the wheel. Search on web shows nothing, but it could be under my nose, or is this another one line Spring change?

Regarding conditional spring config files. In another thread, I made a suggestion of making contexts part of a composite pattern, thus they would have an id, and so could be manipulated just like beans. This would allow conditional stuff and more, IMHO: http://forum.springframework.org/showthread.php?t=9891


--- jbetancourt

[Martin Kersten]

Sorry guys, but it looks like I don't see the point. By using Perferences stores , in what way does it help you to package your API+Spring? Can you give me an example?

[jbetancourt]

I don't see it either.

I see it more like allowing one to store configuration information in a more accessible place. Of course, there are property files for this but they tend to be a pain in some situations (or why invent the Prefs api), or not even accessible, as in EAR application distribution.

[Jon Chase]

We've been investigating a way to package our API more...and at this point, we're going to go with the simplest for us - JAR up our class files, and provide Spring context files templates - if the users need to modify them for their specific situation, they can - otherwise, the default template will configure our application for the most common usage scenario. This incurs the (small) overhead of having the user be responsible for making sure the Spring context is configured correctly, but so far that's looking like the best trade off.