"property" package refactoring

• Key: CAY-701
• Type: Task
• Status: Closed
• Resolution: Fixed
• Priority: Major
• Assignee: Andrus Adamchik
• Reporter: Andrus Adamchik
• Component/s: Cayenne Core Library
• Affects Version/s: 3.0
• Fix Version/s: 3.0M1

Description

org.apache.cayenne.property package requires some refactoring now that we can identify all groups of persistent objects that we need to support via the Cayenne stack. Those are:

* Enhanced POJO implementing "Persistent" via the enhancer.
* Persistent objects generated vi client template (using ValueHolder for the to-one relationships)
* DataObject (generic objects that store properties in a map and provide access via generic methods on the object; using Fault class for lazy faulting)

The few problems this refactoring effort will try to address:

* Replacing property descriptors inheritance with composition/decoration, thus separating different concerns like faulting and property access, and making the descriptors more flexible.
* Naming - the current class naming we got was due to the implementation based on inheritance. Better naming for the property interfaces will be something like this:
- AttributeProperty
- ToOneProperty
- ToManyProperty