You will learn how to use the Java Persistence API (JPA) to map Java objects to relational database tables and perform create, read, update and delete (CRUD) operations on the data in your microservices.

JPA is a Java EE specification for representing relational database table data as Plain Old Java Objects (POJO). JPA simplifies object-relational mapping (ORM) by using annotations to map Java objects to tables in a relational database. In addition to providing an efficient API for performing CRUD operations, JPA also reduces the burden of having to write JDBC and SQL code when performing database operations and takes care of database vendor-specific differences. This capability allows you to focus on the business logic of your application instead of wasting time implementing repetitive CRUD logic.

The application that you will be working with is an event manager, which is composed of a UI and an event microservice for creating, retrieving, updating, and deleting events. In this guide, you will be focused on the event microservice. The event microservice consists of a JPA entity class whose fields will be persisted to a database. The database logic is implemented in a Data Access Object (DAO) to isolate the database operations from the rest of the service. This DAO accesses and persists JPA entities to the database and can be injected and consumed by other components in the microservice. An Embedded Derby database is used as a data store for all the events.

You will use JPA annotations to define an entity class whose fields are persisted to the database. The interaction between your service and the database is mediated by the persistence context that is managed by an entity manager. In a Java EE environment, you can use an application-managed entity manager or a container-managed entity manager. In this guide, you will use a container-managed entity manager that is injected into the DAO so the application server manages the opening and closing of the entity manager for you.

The Open Liberty Project team