EclipseLink

EclipseLink is an open source persistence and ORM framework of the Eclipse Foundation. EclipseLink enables interaction with various data systems, databases, Web services, Object XML Mapping ( OXM ) and enterprise information systems (EIS ).

EclipseLink supports a number of standards such as:

• Java Persistence API (JPA )
• Java Architecture for XML Binding ( JAXB )
• Java EE Connector Architecture ( JCA)
• Service Data Objects (SDO )
• OSGi

EclipseLink is the reference implementation for the Java Persistence API (JPA ) 2.0.

History

EclipseLink is based on TopLink, of which Oracle has contributed a large part of the source code for the start of the EclipseLink project. In contrast to the provision of TopLink Essentials Glassfish, where some important enterprise lacked features that corresponded to the provision for EclipseLink of TopLink 11g version up to the EJB 2 container -managed persistence and a few Oracle Application Server -specific implementations. It also contains the TopLink Mapping Workbench UI graphical mapping of objects to tables. There were only changed the package name and moved some of the code and configuration.

The first version of EclipseLink (1.0) was released on July 8, 2008. Version 1.1 was followed on 11 March 2009 and brought alongside bug fixes improvements to JPA, SDO 2.1.1 and Data Access Service, and DBW, a way to using Web Service access relational databases. EclipseLink 2.0 with support for JPA 2.0 has been released in the final version on 10 December 2009.

EclipseLink is of strategic importance for Sun and Oracle. The next versions of the Oracle Application Server ( and thus TopLink ) and GlassFish 3 are based on EclipseLink.