RDFBean - Object/RDF persistence for Java

Highly expressive, easy to use and type-safe.

Description

RDFBean is an Object/RDF persistence framework for Java. It provides a simple, yet highly expressive annotation based mapping language and a type-safe query language based on Querydsl. The combination of a generic data persistence model (RDF) and a type-safe access layer for entities and queries makes it an ideal tool for rapid application development.

Flexibility

• While designing and implementing domain model one can almost completely ignore all persistence aspects.
  • All mapped classes are directly persitable.
  • Domain model (classes) may be changed without changing persistence schema and without loosing data.
• Extensive support for generics
  • Collection and Map generic value/key types
  • Class-level type variables supported for custom classes
• Easy to use graphical UI for data manipulation using e.g. Protege.
  • Just write your domain model, generate OWL schema and start your favourite OWL editor to input data, metadata or test data.
• Multiple persistence alternatives
  • Develop using a fast in-memory repository.
  • Deploy using an SQL based or a native RDF repository.
• Data export and import out-of-the-box in standard RDF format through direct repository access.

Simplicity

• Simple and powerful mapping language
  • Classes are mapped using annotations on fields, getters, setters and/or even constructor parameters.
  • Localized String properties.
  • Default reference values can be defined for properties.
  • Services may be injected to beans dynamically (e.g. from Spring application context).
• Unified way of localizing both domain model and instances using OWL ontology and RDF.
• OWL ontology generation from Java classes.
• Universal identifiers make it easy to reference data from configuration as well as code.
  • For metadata: countries, languages, pre-defined enumerated values that may change in future - even at runtime.
  • For tests: known instances to write tests against.
• IDE code completion, syntax validation and type checking for queries without any new plugin.

Familiarity

• JPA like interface for persistence
• Object model based queries
  Plain Old Java Objects. POJOs.
  • No runtime generated proxies.
  • No byte code manipulation.
  • No need for separate DTO's.
• Local ids (a.k.a. surrogate ids) can be used for a familiar, easy to use and short integer based identification scheme within an application.
• Fits well into three tier enterprise Java architecture and MVC design model.
• Spring support.
• Guice support.
• Tapestry support

In a nutshell

Got issues with RDFBean?

Post a bug on Launchpad or ask a question in the Forum.

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