Java Reference
In-Depth Information
source products. One might say that open source freeware is not within the cul-
ture of the .
NET
community. That is about to change, if it hasn't already.
Free open source solutions are becoming more popular in the .
NET
commu-
nity. This is partially due to the increase in open source build and test tools that
have been lacking in commercial software for a long time. Projects like Mono,
SharpDevelop,
NA
nt,
NU
nit,
NH
ibernate, and CruiseControl.
NET
have been mak-
ing a significant impact on the traditional .
NET
developer, who may have only
been exposed to Microsoft tools. The .
NET
community has seen the value of open
source software. Even Microsoft has invested in open source with the release of
www.CodePlex.com. Welcome to .
NET
open source mania!
What are the major differences?
The talented i
BATIS.NET
developers have done a great job of keeping i
BATIS
con-
sistent. There are a few minor differences that have mostly to do with design phi-
losophies that differ between the Java and .
NET
platforms. Obviously things like
naming conventions for classes, interfaces, and methods were honored for the
.
NET
platform. In addition, the
XML
structure differs somewhat, but we'll discuss
that more in a moment.
What are the similarities?
i
BATIS.NET
holds all of the same principles and values as the Java version. Simplic-
ity is the goal, while maintaining a great deal of flexibility to ensure that i
BA-
TIS.NET
will work for as many applications as possible. i
BATIS.NET
has few
dependencies and makes few assumptions about your application architecture.
This means that many of the same benefits and considerations apply to i
BA-
TIS.NET
as we discussed for i
BATIS
for Java earlier in this topic.
The remainder of this appendix will describe the basic usage of the i
BATIS.NET
Data Mapper framework. i
BATIS.NET
also has a
DAO
framework called Ibatis-
Net.DataAccess. However, we do not explore the full feature set of i
BATIS.NET
,
including the
DAO
framework, in great detail in this topic.
A.2 Working with iBATIS.NET
If you have any experience with i
BATIS
, you'll become comfortable with i
BA-
TIS.NET
very quickly. This section explores the key points you need to understand
in order to use iBATS.NET. We start with a look at the dependencies (
DLL
s) and
configuration of i
BATIS.NET
. We then draw on your existing i
BATIS
knowledge
and demonstrate the usage of various
SQL
mapping files.
