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Defining and Handling Transient Fields in PJama

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Book cover Research Issues in Structured and Semistructured Database Programming (DBPL 1999)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1949))

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Abstract

The transient keyword of the Java™ programming language was originally introduced to prevent specific class fields from being stored by a persistence mechanism. In the context of orthogonal persistence, this is a particularly useful feature, since it allows the developer to easily deal with state that is external to the system. Such state is inherently transient and should not be stored, but instead re-created when necessary. Unfortunately, the Java Language Specification does not accurately define the semantics and correct usage of the transient keyword. This has left it open to misinterpretation by third parties and its current meaning is tied to the popular Java Object Serialisation mechanism. In this paper we explain why the currently widely-accepted use of the transient keyword is not appropriate in the context of orthogonal persistence, we present a more detailed definition for it, and we show how the handling of transient fields can be efficiently implemented in an orthogonally per- sistent system, while preserving the desired semantics.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, 17 Lilybank Gardens, G12 8RZ, Glasgow, Scotland

    Tony Printezis & Malcolm P. Atkinson

  2. Sun Microsystems Laboratories, 901 San Antonio Road MS UMTV29-110, 94043, Palto Alto, CA, USA

    Mick Jordan

Authors
  1. Tony Printezis
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  2. Malcolm P. Atkinson
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  3. Mick Jordan
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Strathclyde, G1 1XH, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

    Richard Connor

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, 6 King’s College Road, M5S 3H5, Ontario, Toronto, Canada

    Alberto Mendelzon

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© 2000 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Printezis, T., Atkinson, M.P., Jordan, M. (2000). Defining and Handling Transient Fields in PJama. In: Connor, R., Mendelzon, A. (eds) Research Issues in Structured and Semistructured Database Programming. DBPL 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1949. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44543-9_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44543-9_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-41481-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-44543-2

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