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News: CodeFutures announces FireStorm/DAO 2.1

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  1. CodeFutures announces FireStorm/DAO 2.1 (19 messages)

    • Posted by: Andy Grove
    • Posted on: April 19 2004 07:57 EDT
    CodeFutures today announced the GA release of FireStorm/DAO 2.1. FireStorm/DAO generates database persistence code based on a relational database schema. New features in 2.1 include round trip engineering with database synchronization wizard, full JSP client generation, additional EJB code generation support, BLOB and CLOB data type support, and a new GUI.

    Press Release
    CodeFutures™ Announces General Availability of FireStorm/DAO™ 2.1

    [London, UK, April 19, 2004] CodeFutures™ has announced the General Availability of Release 2.1 of its FireStorm/DAO™ Java code generation tool. FireStorm/DAO™ generates code that provides a one-to-one mapping between Java objects and database tables. The benefits provided by CodeFutures' code generation approach include higher developer productivity, better software quality, and lower maintenance costs.

    "FireStorm/DAO has been a huge productivity tool, saving us hundreds of hours on one project alone. However, its true value has been substantially reducing the amount of code our team needs to maintain over the life of the project." Says Cristopher Daniluk, Vice President of Technology for Ohio-based Web Hosting services provider Digital Services Network, Inc.

    According to CodeFutures CTO, Andy Grove "It is well understood and accepted that generated code will always have fewer errors than hand-written code, due to the elimination of typos, human error, and so on. However, we also stress the technical quality of code generated by FireStorm/DAO". CodeFutures' deep technical knowledge of Database Access Object technology means that the automatically generated persistence layer Java code is as good as the best hand-written Java code.

    "As part of our evaluation, we did a comparison between the code generated by FireStorm/DAO™ and hand-written code we had already finished: it was almost identical." says Alex Shmelev, President, Alerois Corporation, California.
    The new features in Release 2.1 are round trip engineering, full JSP client generation, Tomcat Web application generation, additional EJB code generation support, and BLOB and CLOB data type support. A description of the new features in FireStorm/DAO™ 2.1 is available at:
    http://www.codefutures.com/library/CodeFuturesFireStormDAOrelease21.pdf

    FireStorm/DAO 2.1 GA is available for immediate download and free evaluation from:
    http://www.codefutures.com/products/firestorm/download/

    FireStorm/DAO 2.1 is priced from $195 per developer. There are no runtime deployment licensing fees.

    Product download:

    http://www.codefutures.com/products/firestorm/
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    Threaded Messages (19)

  2. thoughts, alternatives?[ Go to top ]

    Has anyone used FireStorm/DAO?
    Is there a good open source alternative?

    -Gene
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  3. Lomboz generates EJB with xdoclet[ Go to top ]

    Lomboz (an eclipse Plugin) generates different types of EJB's, but not as advanced as Firestorm does.

    For example, it generates EJB CMP entity beans with the XDoclet code, by entering the fieldnames and types).

    Lomboz is opensource and available free for download www.objectlearn.com
    Reply to this Reply to original

  4. source code available[ Go to top ]

    Firestorm ships with the source code.

    link name


    Not exactly the same as OPEN source - but you do get to customize your code generation - which I guess is your main point?
    Reply to this Reply to original

  5. Cayenne is a good opensource framework[ Go to top ]

    There is the ObjectStyle Cayenne project. It is persistence framework very interesting. It has a good GUI modeler, that makes reverse engeneering from a lot of RDBMS. It Generates classes in a DAO style. See http://www.objectstyle.org/cayenne/index.html .
    Reply to this Reply to original

  6. Middlegen opensource alternative[ Go to top ]

    Middlegen is an open source alternative that can generate code for various targets and schema from many database vendors. Your not restricted to just persistence aspects. Targets include; EJB, Hibernate ORM, Torque, JDO, HTML, JSP/Struts, MDA XMI, and many others. Interested parties visit: http://boss.bekk.no/boss/middlegen/
    Reply to this Reply to original

  7. thoughts, alternatives?[ Go to top ]

    I have used Firestorm/DAO Standard Edition and have found it extremely easy to use.

    Here are my observations...
    - Easy to use reverse engineering feature
    - Datasources can be managed internally to the DAO (http://java.sun.com/blueprints/corej2eepatterns/Patterns/DataAccessObject.html)
    - Connections can be created outside the DAO and passed in on the constructor
    - Generated code follows best practices: DAO, Factory, Value Object patterns

    Overall Firestorm is very intuitive. There was some issues in the past with Clob and Blob support but this latest release has "ironed out those wrinkles".

    Their customer service has been responsive to questions and development teams quick to fufill enhancement requests.

    I have not tried the enterprise version and would love to hear any feedback regarding it.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  8. Jaxor is a Free/Open Source Alternative[ Go to top ]

    Has anyone used FireStorm/DAO?Is there a good open source alternative?-Gene
    Using Velocity, Jaxor generates Java Beans, Finders, MetaData, typed lists, interfaces, etc. The framework is intended to be small, lightweight, and extensible.

    http://jaxor.sf.net

    Mike Rettig
    Jaxor Developer
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  9. Jaxor is a Free/Open Source Alternative[ Go to top ]

    I think you're comparing apples and pears...

    I'm quoting here:

    Jaxor Summary from the Jaxor site
    From a xml file, the code generator creates a type safe Java object with full insert, update, delete, and query capabilities.
    Full description here: http://jaxor.sourceforge.net/?q=overview



    Codefutures description:

    FireStorm/DAO is the only tool that generates JDBC, CMP EJB, and JDO persistence tier behind a set of common service-oriented Data Access Object (DAO) interface and factories, allowing a plug-and-play approach to persistence.

    Full description here: http://www.codefutures.com/products/firestorm/">FireStorm/DAO</a>
    Reply to this Reply to original

  10. Butler is a open source alternative[ Go to top ]

    http://butler.sourceforge.net is an object model on top JDBC including a code generator. Using butler you work with Record, Table or Query objects instead of writing SQL-statements.

    Butler also has a set of swing components (and jsp tag library) for making search panels, record tables and record editors.

    /Fredrik
    Reply to this Reply to original

  11. Butler is a open source alternative[ Go to top ]

    now we're comparing apples and oranges

    Butler seems to provide another good and valid approach...but different.

    Butler only supports JDBC.

    Firestorm generates DAOs for CMP EJB, JDO, and JDBC.


    I like to try out the persistence options and have the option of changing later on.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  12. CodeFutures[ Go to top ]

    Hi Philip,

    I intend to try out the CodeFutures tool on a project that I am currently reviewing in terms of architect design and performance. It will be nice to able to test drive different approaches. I just need to see how easy it is possible to change from one persistence mechanism to another after the addition of business logic.

    Could you maybe clarify your professional/social relation to CodeFutures to this thread and the other threads that you have posted on that all seem to relate to persistence where you have advocated this tool. What kind of projects have you used the tool on? Customers? Application types in terms of size of domain model, distribution architecture and performance constraints?

    Regards,

    William
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  13. CodeFutures[ Go to top ]

    Hi Philip,I intend to try out the CodeFutures tool on a project that I am currently reviewing in terms of architect design and performance. It will be nice to able to test drive different approaches. I just need to see how easy it is possible to change from one persistence mechanism to another after the addition of business logic.
    My area of expertise is Web Services - SOAP, WSDL, etc. I work for a document software company - Esker - that has real on demand services for printing letters and faxing. Also mobule intelligent networks and SMSC ....

    As you can see from my postings, I'm not a real expert on data access objects.

    The really only useful advice I can give you is that JDBC is usually fastest. This is not something CodeFutures pushes because that's their low end product. Not much use to you I guess if your company mandates using J2EE and you have to use CMP - EJBs.

    Regarding switching between different persistence mechanisms - that's one of the main points of the code generation!
    Reply to this Reply to original

  14. CodeFutures[ Go to top ]

    Regarding switching between different persistence mechanisms - that's one of the main points of the code generation!
    Spring offers switching between JDBC, Hibernate, JDO, iBATIS and others without code generation. In practice I usually find that if I use JDBC where it's a good fit and Hibernate where O/R mapping is a good fit, I don't need code generation because I don't need a lot of verbose, boring code.

    Regards,
    Rod
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  15. CodeFutures[ Go to top ]

    I don't need code generation because I don't need a lot of verbose, boring code. Regards, Rod
    Come on Rod .. code is never boring ;-)
    Reply to this Reply to original

  16. CodeFutures[ Go to top ]

    I don't need code generation because I don't need a lot of verbose, boring code.Regards,Rod
    don't you mean "I need code generation because I don't want to write a lot of verbose, boring code"?
    Reply to this Reply to original

  17. CodeFutures[ Go to top ]

    don't you mean "I need code generation because I don't want to write a lot of verbose, boring code"?
    I mean my code base typically doesn't include a lot of verbose code, because of my design decisions. So I don't need code generation to get there.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  18. You may want to try DaoGen[ Go to top ]

    DaoGen is not actually open source, but you can use it to generate GPL code for free. It is really easy to use, since it does not require any installation on your computer. You can use DaoGen here: http://titaniclinux.net/daogen

    I hope you will find it useful.

    Luigi
    Reply to this Reply to original

  19. You may want to try DaoGen[ Go to top ]

    DAOGEn is very good but really can not trust that it will be there next time I need it.

    Then which of the above software does the same thing as DAOGen and FireStorms?

    Firestorms is very very expensive and does not fit in my budget in any way.

    Regards,
    Mac
    Reply to this Reply to original

  20. FireStorm[ Go to top ]

    I Finally managed to buy FireStorm. It seems very good. Specially that if you have your database designed it can build complete Data Layer from it. Or you can do it reverse and design classes and get database creation script. I wish we can see hibernate soon. Mac
    Reply to this Reply to original