Hi all,
I have a design question concerning the retrieval of entities thru EJB-QL.
I need to develop a flexible way to retrieve some entities and their associated entities, which results in a (value)object graph.
Everyone would say: issue a EJB-QL query on the master entities and then access the associated entities with their cmr accessors.
The problem is, that I want to select SPECIFIC master and associated entities. For example:
All customers whose name begin with 'M' (like 'Microsoft' :-() and the associated invoices with an amount greater than $1000.
Sure, it's no problem to write an EJB-QL query, which returns the appropriate customer entities.
But I have to retrieve the invoice entities too. If I use the cmr accessors, I'll get all the invoices, not only those with an amount greater than $1000.
So finally, my question is how to design this stuff optimally, considering, that I'm developing a general purpose framework for business apps, which has to handle arbitrary EJB's.
Is it better to write a method, which filters the associated entities (which is quite "hard coded", or should I use ejbSelect methods (which would be more flexible) ?
TX
