I'm using EF code first with a fairly large number of entity types and I am building a number of reports with filter models that refer to the ID (primary key) fields in the different entity types. Depending on the table, the ID field is either a Byte, Short, Integer or Long (depending on how many records I expect in that table and where it is referenced from).
Eg. I may have a "Channel" table which has an ID field of type Short, whereas "Order" has an ID field of type "Integer".
When I create a model for a view to filter on eg. Channel, I would do a ChannelID Property, which would either be a Short or a Short? (as in Nullable(Of Short)). However, this is a pain as I have to look up the correct ID type for the relevant entity type each time I add a filter and in the long run, it is fragile as I may change the ID type on a particular entity and don't want to have to hunt down every reference to it.
Ideally, I would like to have some way of referring to it eg.
Public Property ChannelID As TypeOf([Channel].[ID])
but I can't see any way to do that.
If I was using C, I would probably #define ChannelID short and just refer to the type as ChannelID throughout, but I can't see any way of using the VB.NET compiler to achieve something like that (which isn't quite as good as the above solution either.
I have thought of the idea of implementing it as an interface for each type, but that doesn't work if there are multiple properties filtering on the same entity in a single model (which is possible), and it is messy as it means an interface for every entity type.
I realise that I could just set them all as Long and there isn't really a major disadvantage to doing this, but I am picky about matching types.
Does anyone have any clever ideas for dealing with this?
Type aliasing will work across files - set this on the 'References' tab of the project properties - e.g., test = System.Int32.
Then in any file in the project you can use the type alias 'test'.
e.g.,
Dim myInt As test
Related
Let's say in my domain I have a Money(amount, Currency(name)) value object (for example: new Money(1000, new Currency('USD'))).
However in my presentation layer (and only there really) I don't want to use USD currency name, but symbol ($) instead.
I don't want to overload my value object with presentation properties (since besides symbol there can be also such things as placement).
How do you guys handle this kind of mappings? Should I create some kind of CurrencyPropertyInMemoryRepository and fetch all info from there? What are my options?
I understand your concern that you want to separate this presentation aspect from your domain data, and if you want to go that way, I think using a repository for mapping the currency name to its symbol might be a good solution (retrieving the correct symbol could then be done in a ValueConverter for example that transforms your model data before they are presented in your UI).
But I personally would not have an issue by storing this additional symbol information also in the currency value object, for two reasons:
The currency symbol is highly related to the currency itself, so whenever the currency name changes, the symbol might also change. Therefore it would make sense to have both information stored in the same place or at least quite close to each other. When using an additional repository, your information is spread at least over two places.
If you have both information within your value object, you could also put additional behavior in your value object (e.g. not every currency has a symbol, in that case you need some logic to decide what to print instead).
I have an ABAP class method, say, select_something. select_something has an exporting parameter, say, et_result. et_result is of type standard table because the type of et_result cannot be determined until runtime.
The method sometimes gives a short dump saying With ABAP/4 Open SQL array select, the output table is too small at "select * into table et_result from (lv_tablename) where..."
Error analysis:
......in this particular case, the database table is 3806 bytes wide, but the internal table is only 70 bytes wide.
I tried "any table" too and the error is the same.
You could return a data reference. Your query will no longer fail, and you can assign the data to a correctly typed field symbol afterwards.
" Definition
class-methods select_all
importing
!tabname type string
returning
value(results) type ref to data.
...
...
" Implementation
method select_all.
data dref type ref to data.
create data dref type standard table of (tabname).
field-symbols <tab> type any table.
assign dref->* to <tab>.
select * from (tabname) into table <tab>.
get reference of <tab> into results.
endmethod.
Also, I agree with #vwegert that dynamic queries (and programming for that matter) should be avoided when possible.
What you're trying to do looks horribly wrong on many levels. NEVER use SELECT FROM (whatever) unless someone points a gun at your head AND the door is locked tight. You'll loose every kind of static error checking the system might be able to provide you with. For example, the compiler will no longer be able to tell you "Hey, that table you're reading from is 3806 bytes wide." It simply can't tell, even if you use constants. You'll find that out the hard way, producing short dumps, especially when switching between unicode and NUC systems, quite likely some in production systems. No fun.
(Actually there are a few - very very VERY few - good uses for dynamic table names in the SELECT statement. I need them about once every two to three years, and I code quite a lot weird stuff. Just avoid them wherever you can, even at the cost of writing more code. It's just not worth the trouble fixing broken stuff later.)
Then, changing the generic formal parameter type does not do anything to the type of the actual parameter. If you pass a STANRDARD TABLE OF mandt WITH DEFAULT KEY to your method, that table will have lines of 3 characters. It will be a STANDARD TABLE, and as such, it will also be an ANY TABLE, and that's about it. You can twist the generic types anywhere you like, there's no way to enforce correctness using generic types the way you use them. It's up to the caller to make sure that all the right types are used. That's a bad way to fly.
First off, I agree with vwegert's response, try to avoid dynamic sql selections if you can
That said, check the short dump. If the error is an exception class, you can wrap the SELECT statement in a try/catch block and at least stop it from dumping.
You can also try "INTO CORRESPONDING FIELDS OF TABLE et_result". If ET_RESULT is dynamic, you might have to cast it into the proper structure using RTTS. This might give you some ideas...
Couldn't agree more to vwegert, but if there is absolutely no other way (and there usually is) of performing your task than using dynamic select statements and dynamically typed parameters, do some checks on the type of the table and the parameter at runtime.
Use CL_ABAP_TYPEDESCR and its subclasses to do so.
This way, you can handle errors at runtime without your program dumping,
But as vwegert said, this dynamic stuff is pure evil and will most certainly break at some point during runtime. Adding the necessary error handling will most likely be a lot more work and a lot harder than redesigning your code to none dynamic SQL and typed parameters
If I have a POCO class with ResultColumn attribute set and then when I do a Single<Entity>() call, my result column isn't mapped. I've set my column to be a result column because its value should always be generated by SQL column's default constraint. I don't want this column to be injected or updated from business layer. What I'm trying to say is that my column's type is a simple SQL data type and not a related entity type (as I've seen ResultColumn being used mostly on those).
Looking at code I can see this line in PetaPoco:
// Build column list for automatic select
QueryColumns = ( from c in Columns
where !c.Value.ResultColumn
select c.Key
).ToArray();
Why are result columns excluded from automatic select statement because as I understand it their nature is to be read only. So used in selects only. I can see this scenario when a column is actually a related entity type (complex). Ok. but then we should have a separate attribute like ComputedColumnAttribute that would always be returned in selects but never used in inserts or updates...
Why did PetaPoco team decide to omit result columns from selects then?
How am I supposed to read result columns then?
I can't answer why the creator did not add them to auto-selects, though I would assume it's because your particular use-case is not the main one that they were considering. If you look at the examples and explanation for that feature on their site, it's more geared towards extra columns you bring back in a join or calculation (like maybe a description from a lookup table for a code value). In these situations, you could not have them automatically added to the select because they are not part of the underlying table.
So if you want to use that attribute, and get a value for the property, you'll have to use your own manual select statement rather than relying on the auto-select.
Of course, the beauty of using PetaPoco is that you can easily modify it to suit your needs, by either creating a new attribute, like you suggest above, or modifying the code you showed to not exclude those fields from the select (assuming you are not using ResultColumn in other join-type situations).
I have a number of database table that looks like this:
EntityId int : 1
Countries1: "1,2,3,4,5"
Countries2: "7,9,10,22"
I would like to have NHibernate load the Country entities identifed as 1,2,3,4,5,7,9 etc. whenever my EntityId is loaded.
The reason for this is that we want to avoid a proliferation of joins, as there are scores of these collections.
Does fetching the countries have to happen as the entity is loaded - it is acceptable that you run a query to fetch these? (You could amend your DAO to run the query after fetching the entity.) The reason I ask is that simply running a query compared to having custom code invoked when entities are loaded requires less "plumbing" and framework innards.
After fecthing your entity, and you have the Country1,Country2 lists, You can run a query like:
select c from Country c where c.id in (:Country1)
passing :Country1 as a named parameter. You culd also retrieve all rows for both sets of countries
select Entity e where e.id in (:Country1, :Country2)
I'm hoping the country1 & country2 strings can be used as they are, but I have a feeling this won't work. If so, you should convert the Strings to a collection of Integers and pass the collection as the query parameter.
EDIT: The "plumbing" to make this more transparent comes in the form of the IInterceptor interface. This allows you to plug in to how entities are loaded, saved, updated, flushed etc. Your entity will look something like this
class MyEntity
{
IList<Country> Country1;
IList<Country> Country2;
// with public getter/setters
String Country1IDs;
String Country2IDs;
// protected getter and setter for NHibernate
}
Although the domain object has two representations of the list - the actual entities, and the list of IDs, this is the same intrusion that you have when declaring a regular ID field in an entity. The collections (country1 and Country2) are not persisted in the mapping file.
With this in place, you provide an IInterceptor implementation that hooks the loading and saving. On loading, you fetch the value of the countryXID property an use to load the list of countries (as I described above.) On saving, you turn the IList of countries into an ID list, and save this value.
I couldn't find the documentation for IInterceptor, but there are many projects on the net using it. The interface is described in this article.
No you cannot, at least not with default functionality.
Considering that there is no SPLIT string function in SQL it would be hard for any ORM to detect the discreet integer values delimited by commas in a varchar column. If you somehow (custom sql func) overcame that obstacle, your best shot would be to use some kind of component/custom user type that would still make a smorgasbond of joins on the 'Country' table to fetch, in the end, a collection of country entities...
...but I'm not sure it can be done, and it would also mean writing from scratch the persistence mechanism as well.
As a side note, I must say that i don't understand the design decision; you denormalized the db and, well, since when joins are bad?
Also, the other given answer will solve your problem without re-designing your database, and without writing a lot of experimental plumbing code. However, it will not answer your question for hydration of the country entities
UPDATE:
on a second thought, you can cheat, at least for the select part.
You could make a VIEW the would split the values and display them as separate rows:
Entity-Country1 View:
EntityId Country
1 1
1 2
1 3
etc
Entity-Country2 View:
EntityId Country
1 7
1 9
1 10
etc
Then you can map the view
I am fairly new to nHibernate and DDD, so please bear with me.
I have a requirement to create a new report from my SQL table. The report is read-only and will be bound to a GridView control in an ASP.NET application.
The report contains the following fields Style, Color, Size, LAQty, MTLQty, Status.
I have the entities for Style, Color and Size, which I use in other asp.net pages. I use them via repositories. I am not sure If should use the same entities for my report or not. If I use them, where I am supposed to map the Qty and Status fields?
If I should not use the same entities, should I create a new class for the report?
As said I am new to this and just trying to learn and code properly.
Thank you
For reports its usually easier to use plain values or special DTO's. Of course you can query for the entity that references all the information, but to put it into the list (eg. using databinding) it's handier to have a single class that contains all the values plain.
To get more specific solutions as the few bellow you need to tell us a little about your domain model. How does the class model look like?
generally, you have at least three options to get "plain" values form the database using NHibernate.
Write HQL that returns an array of values
For instance:
select e1.Style, e1.Color, e1.Size, e2.LAQty, e2.MTLQty
from entity1 inner join entity2
where (some condition)
the result will be a list of object[]. Every item in the list is a row, every item in the object[] is a column. This is quite like sql, but on a higher level (you describe the query on entity level) and is database independent.
Or you create a DTO (data transfer object) only to hold one row of the result:
select new ReportDto(e1.Style, e1.Color, e1.Size, e2.LAQty, e2.MTLQty)
from entity1 inner join entity2
where (some condition)
ReportDto need to implement a constructor that has all this arguments. The result is a list of ReportDto.
Or you use CriteriaAPI (recommended)
session.CreateCriteria(typeof(Entity1), "e1")
.CreateCriteria(typeof(Entity2), "e2")
.Add( /* some condition */ )
.Add(Projections.Property("e1.Style", "Style"))
.Add(Projections.Property("e1.Color", "Color"))
.Add(Projections.Property("e1.Size", "Size"))
.Add(Projections.Property("e2.LAQty", "LAQty"))
.Add(Projections.Property("e2.MTLQty", "MTLQty"))
.SetResultTransformer(AliasToBean(typeof(ReportDto)))
.List<ReportDto>();
The ReportDto needs to have a proeprty with the name of each alias "Style", "Color" etc. The output is a list of ReportDto.
I'm not schooled in DDD exactly, but I've always modeled my nouns as types and I'm surprised the report itself is an entity. DDD or not, I wouldn't do that, rather I'd have my reports reflect the results of a query, in which quantity is presumably count(*) or sum(lineItem.quantity) and status is also calculated (perhaps, in the page).
You haven't described your domain, but there is a clue on those column headings that you may be doing a pivot over the data to create LAQty, MTLQty which you'll find hard to do in nHibernate as its designed for OLTP and does not even do UNION last I checked. That said, there is nothing wrong with abusing HQL (Hibernate Query Language) for doing lightweight reporting, as long as you understand you are abusing it.
I see Stefan has done a grand job of describing the syntax for that, so I'll stop there :-)