What's New in This Guide

The following topics introduce the new and changed features of EclipseLink and other significant changes that are described in this guide, and provides pointers to additional information.

New and Changed Features for Release 2.7

• Serialized object policy, for storing a serialized version of an entity into a single column in the database. See "Serialized Object Policy".

• Auomated tuning, for a dynamic single tuning option. See "Automated Tuning" on page 18-8.

Other Significant Changes in this Document for Release 2.7

New and Changed Features for 12c (12.1.2)

EclipseLink 2.4.2 includes the following new and changed features that are documented in this book. This list does not necessarily include all new or changed features in this release. It only includes the new features that are documented in this book.

• Client isolation, where multiple application tenants may share database tables and schemas. This allows applications to manage entities for multiple tenants in the same application. See Chapter 14, "Tenant Isolation Using EclipseLink."

• JSON bindings, for converting objects directly to and from JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). This can be useful when creating RESTful services, using JSON messages with Java API for RESTful Web Services (JAX-RS) services. See Chapter 16, "Converting Objects to and from JSON Documents,"

• RESTful persistence, where Java Persistence API (JPA) entities can be exposed through standards-based RESTful services such as JAX-RS, using either JSON or XML media. See Chapter 19, "Exposing JPA Entities Through RESTful Data Services."

• Support for TopLink Database Change Notification (DCN), which allows the database to notify TopLink of database changes so that cached objects can be invalidated in the shared cache. See Chapter 20, "Using Database Events to Invalidate the Cache."

• NoSQL database support, allowing objects to be mapped to non-relational (NoSQL) data sources. See Chapter 21, "Using EclipseLink with NoSQL Databases,".

For a complete list of the changes in this release, see http://www.eclipse.org/eclipselink/releases/2.5.php.

Other Significant Changes in this Document for 12c (12.1.2)

For this release of EclipseLink, this guide has been updated in several ways. Following are the sections that have been added or changed.

• Moved installation information from appendix to Chapter 2, "Installing EclipseLink,".

• Added new chapter, Chapter 5, "Using EclipseLink with JBoss 7 Application Server," to describe how EclipseLink can be used with applications deployed to JBoss Application Server 7.1.

• Added new chapter, Chapter 6, "Using EclipseLink with IBM WebSphere Application Server," to describe how EclipseLink can be used with applications deployed to IBM WebSphere Application Server

• Added new chapter, Chapter 7, "Migrating from Native TopLink," to describe migrate applications using "native" TopLink object-relational mapping (ORM) APIs to the current EclipseLink APIs.

• Added information about data partitioning in Chapter 10, "Scaling Applications in Clusters."

• Split Chapter 11, "Providing Software as a Service." into four chapters:

  • Chapter 11, "Providing Software as a Service." This is now just an overview of the following three chapters.

  • Chapter 12, "Making JPA Entities and JAXB Beans Extensible"

  • Chapter 13, "Using an External MetaData Source"

  • Chapter 14, "Tenant Isolation Using EclipseLink" and also updated this chapter with information about Virtual Private Database (VPD) multi-tenancy and table-per-tenant multi-tenancy

• Added new chapter, Chapter 16, "Converting Objects to and from JSON Documents," to describe how to convert objects directly to and from JSON

• Added information about weaving to Chapter 17, "Testing JPA Outside a Container," to describe how to use the persistence unit JAR file to test an application outside the container (for instance, in applications for the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE platform)).

• Added new chapter, Chapter 19, "Exposing JPA Entities Through RESTful Data Services," to describe how to expose JPA entities through Java Persistence API-RESTful Services (JPA-RS), using either JSON or XML media.

• Added new chapter, Chapter 20, "Using Database Events to Invalidate the Cache," to describe how to use EclipseLink Database Change Notification (DCN) for shared caching in a JPA environment. DCN allows the database to notify EclipseLink of database changes. The changed objects are invalidated in the EclipseLink shared cache. Stale data can be discarded, even if other applications access the same data in the database.

• Added new chapter, Chapter 22, "Using EclipseLink with the Oracle Database," to describe how to use the Oracle Database features that are supported by EclipseLink.