Salto-db generator: installation & use

Salto-db generator is an Eclipse plug-in that allows you to generate JAVA classes in order to interact between your application and a datasource.

At this time, salto-db generator supports two persistance layers softwares:

  • salto-db: salto-db dataobjects generation
  • hibernate: Plain Old Java Objects (POJO) generation + xml mapping files or EJB3 annotations (since Hibernate 3.2)

Installation

Installation is straight forward, once you have Eclipse. You need to add a new update site (Eclipse -> Help -> Software Updates -> Find and install -> Search for new features to install -> New remote site)

The update site URL that you need is the following: http://salto-db.sourceforge.net/plugin/

Salto-db generator is available in an Eclipse perspective:

Salto-db perspective

Use

Here is an example to illustrate functionalities provided by this plug-in.

Suppose that we have a database which contains three tables with the following relationships between them:

Database schema

One or more customers (CLIENT table) can live in only one address (ADRESSE table). Each customer has his own detail (PROFIL_CLIENT table).

The first step is to connect to database through salto-db generator plug-in to retrieve database schema.

Then, you just have to "connect" to this new connection:

Once you are connected, you can see tables in database:

The next step is to generate classes. You have to choose your plugin (Hibernate with EJB3 annotations, Hibernate, Salto-db) thanks to this view:

You also need to select tables that you need to map in your application:

Salto-db generator proposes you types mapping between Java types and Sql types:

You can click the "Apply Templates" button to apply template. Generation can start!

Your project looks like:

We advise you to have a look to the hibernate.cfg.xml to check if you are agree with the chosen dialect.

You can now use generated classes in your code: