What is iBATIS? - iBATIS in Action - page 40

Second, i BATIS has features that allow it to effectively work with very large data
sets. i BATIS supports features like row handlers that allow batch processing of very
large record sets, one record at a time. It also supports fetching a range of results,
allowing you to fetch only the data absolutely necessary for your immediate needs.
If you have 10,000 records and only want records 500 to 600, then you can easily
fetch just those records. i BATIS supports driver hints that allow it to perform such
operations very efficiently.
Finally, i BATIS allows you to map your objects to the database in multiple ways.
It's pretty rare that an enterprise system functions only in a single mode. Many
enterprise-class systems need to perform transactional functions throughout the
day and perform batch functions during the night. i BATIS allows you to have the
same class mapped in multiple ways to ensure that each function is supported in
the most efficient way possible. i BATIS also supports multiple fetch strategies. That
is, you can choose to have some data loaded lazily, while other complex object
graphs are loaded with a single SQL join to avoid serious performance problems.
This sounds a lot like a sales pitch. So while we're in the mood, why don't we go
into some reasons why you want to use i BATIS ? We'll do exactly that in section 2.5.
To be fair, a little later in section 2.5 we'll discuss some times when you may not want
to use i BATIS .

2.3 Why use iBATIS?

There are a great many reasons to use i BATIS in nearly any system. As you learned
earlier in this chapter, a framework like i BATIS offers opportunities to inject archi-
tectural benefits into your application. Here we'll discuss these benefits and the
features that make them possible.

2.3.1 Simplicity

i BATIS is widely regarded as being one of the simplest persistence frameworks
available today. Simplicity is at the heart of the design goals of the i BATIS team,
and it takes priority over nearly everything else. This simplicity is achieved by
maintaining a very solid foundation upon which i BATIS is built: JDBC and SQL .
i BATIS is easy for Java developers because it works like JDBC , only with much less
code. Almost everything you knew about JDBC applies to i BATIS as well. You can
almost think of i BATIS as JDBC code described in XML format. That said, i BATIS
includes a number of other architectural benefits that JDBC does not have, which
we'll discuss next. i BATIS is also easy to understand for database administrators