How to use Fénix Framework

Introduction

The Fénix Framework is useful for applications that need to have a transactional and persistent domain model.

Typically, a domain model is programmed in Java by using Java classes to implement the domain model’s entities. Relationships between entities, however, do not map that easily into Java constructs. Instead, they are typically implemented in each of the participating entities’ classes, either as references to other objects, or as collections of objects, or both.

Moreover, classes corresponding to domain model’s entities have other requirements that are not common to classes implementing other types of objects in the application. For instance, their objects need to be persistent and are typically shared among many concurrent threads. So, these classes need to be implemented specially, taking these requirements in consideration.

Given the special nature and needs of the domain model, in the Fénix Framework the domain model is defined using a new language that was specifically created to allow the definition of the structural aspects of a domain model. This language is the DML (Domain Modeling Language). A domain model defined in the DML is then compiled into the corresponding Java classes that correctly implement that domain model structure in such a way that allows the programmers to further define the entities’ behaviors in plain Java.

The Fénix Framework stores the application’s entities in a storage that depends on the selected Backend. It does that automatically and transparently to the programmer.

So, in a nutshell, to use the Fénix Framework programmers have to do the following:

1. Define the structure of the domain model in DML (read more);
2. Write the rest of the program in plain old Java;
3. Use the @Atomic annotation on the methods that should execute atomically (read more);
4. Somewhere in the Java code, initialize the framework. Since version 2.0, the framework attempts automatic initialization when first accessed (read more);
5. Configure your storage. This will be used to store the application’s data (read more);
6. Build and run the application.

Have a look at the Quick Start page for a guide to create your first Fénix Framework-based application. In the following we describe how to integrate the Fénix Framework in your application development cycle.

Build and run your application

The Fénix Framework is provided as a set of JAR files, which should be made available to the application both during compile and runtime. At compile time, the Fénix Framework is required to generate the backend-specific code of the domain entities. At runtime it is used both by the generated code and by the application code. Here we describe the general procedure to setup the Fénix Framework to develop an application.

The framework is developed using Maven, so if you use Maven to build your application, you can just depend on the framework’s artifacts that you need, by adding them to your pom.xml:

<dependencies>
    <!-- add dependencies for the desired backends -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>pt.ist</groupId>
        <artifactId>fenix-framework-backend-infinispan</artifactId>
        <version>2.0-cloudtm</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

These artifacts are available via the Fénix Framework Nexus repository, so you need to add it to your configuration:

<pluginRepositories>
    <pluginRepository>
        <id>fenix-ashes-maven-repository</id>
        <url>https://fenix-ashes.ist.utl.pt/maven-public</url>
    </pluginRepository>
</pluginRepositories>

<pluginRepositories>
    <repository>
        <id>fenix-ashes-maven-repository</id>
        <url>https://fenix-ashes.ist.utl.pt/maven-public</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>

Additionally, you will probably want to hook the dml-maven-plugin to your build process, so that your domain classes get properly generated and post-processed. This can be achieved by adding the plugin to the build phase.

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>pt.ist</groupId>
            <artifactId>dml-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>${fenixframework.version}</version>
            <configuration>
                <codeGeneratorClassName>${fenixframework.code.generator}</codeGeneratorClassName>
            </configuration>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>generate-domain</goal>
                        <goal>post-compile</goal>
                    </goals>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

The fenixframework.code.generator property, shown in the previous listing, could be set in your properties section of the POM file, as per the following example:

<properties>
    <fenixframework.code.generator>
        pt.ist.fenixframework.backend.infinispan.InfinispanCodeGenerator
    </fenixframework.code.generator>
    <!-- alternative value could be pt.ist.fenixframework.backend.ogm.OgmCodeGenerator -->
</properties>

Just make sure that fenixframework.version property is set in accordance with the version used for the other Fénix Framework modules. This ensures that you use a plugin that matches the version of the framework you are using.

The steps described above are all that is necessary to be able to develop using the Fénix Framework. The Maven build system will automatically download the required artifacts and the plugins will hook to the correct phases of your build.

Additionally, you may opt to compile the framework from source. It can be downloaded from GitHub and packaged with:

git clone git://github.com/fenix-framework/fenix-framework.git
cd fenix-framework
mvn package

The previous sequence produces the artifacts, i.e. one JAR file for each Fénix Framework sub-module. To use the Fénix Framework in your application, these packaged JAR files are required. They can be installed to the local Maven repository with:

mvn install

If you use any system other than Maven, first make sure that the jars resulting from the execution of mvn package are visible in your application’s build and runtime classpaths, and then check for any additional dependencies. You can check for dependencies using the Maven dependency plugin (even if you don’t use Maven in your application):

mvn dependency:list

At this point your application should be set up correctly to integrate the Fénix Framework in its build dependencies. If you are not using Maven to build you application, then you need to take care of two additional steps. The first is to run the DML Compiler (Java program pt.ist.fenixframework.DmlCompiler) to generate the source base classes before compiling your own code, and the second is to run the post-processor (Java program pt.ist.fenixframework.core.FullPostProcessDomainClasses) on your compiled classes. Both tools come available with the Fénix Framework code in the fenix-framework-dml-compiler sub-module.

Finally, when deploying your application ensure that Fénix Framework and all of its dependencies are available in the CLASSPATH.