Who Should Read This Book?

This book is intended for software architects, designers, and engineers who are responsible for building data access software components. In addition, the material in this book is also appropriate for students who wish to understand common data access problems and solutions.

This book describes data access patterns using common database and object-oriented concepts and terminology. It is expected that the reader has a basic familiarity with both of these. If you run across a term that is not familiar to you, please consult the glossary at the end of the book.

The patterns in this book apply to many platforms, programming languages, and databases. The sample code for each pattern is written using the Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE), Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), and Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) APIs. The sample code expresses database operations using Structured Query Language (SQL). A basic understanding of Java and JDBC is helpful when studying this sample code, but it is not essential. Comments and explanations accompany any code that is not straightforward.