This chapter discusses the persistence layer in the overall Web Application Framework. This was originally discussed in Section 1.2.4 Persistence. You can find persistence tutorials in Chapter 9 Persistence Tutorial.
The storage and retrieval of persistent data is a common requirement of business applications. WAF provides a persistence layer as a generic solution to this requirement.
The WAF persistence layer allows naturally written Java classes to be persisted to and queried from a relational database. This is more than simply a method to save Java classes within the database. Developers can use the full range of standard object-oriented modeling techniques, such as inheritance, interfaces, polymorphism, associations, and composition when writing their Java classes.
WAF persistence is an example of an object-relational mapping layer. This chapter will discuss some of the concepts required to understand and use WAF persistence. Examples and tutorials are detailed in Chapter 9 Persistence Tutorial.