10g session.xml etc.

Question

In a project with my TopLink mappings and where I have generated sessions.xml and toplink-deployment-descriptor.xml, I use code like this:
SessionManager.getManager().getSession("Avega")
to get a session, and then try readAllObjects(Someclass.class).
First, I get "The session.xml resource [sessions.xml] was not found on the resource path." sessions.xml (should it be singular or plural?) is in the META-INF folder generated by the IDE. If I copy it to the top of the classes directory and try again, I get this:
"A parsing fatal error was thrown while parsing the XML file. It occurs at line 2 and column -1 in the XML document.
Internal Exception: org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: Relative URI "sessions_9_0_4.dtd"; can not be resolved without a base URI."
So I edit the file to add "http://" in front of the dtd name. Now JDev tells me it can't find toplink-deployment-descriptor.xml, at which point I notice that sessions.xml has the absolute path to the location where that file was generated /on another machine/ (I checked this project out of CVS.) How does this work when the application is deployed?
Along the way, I'm also getting errors of libraries not found -- why doesn't a project with TopLink in the "Technology Scope" automatically add at least the XMLParser to the library path?
Once I get all this working, I'm getting various errors regarding the mapping, although the 'Mapping Status Report' says there are no errors, and my toplink-deployment-descriptor.xml is freshly generated. The errors are of two types:
"The table [USER_PANEL_DEFAULTS] is not present in this descriptor." -- although the table is actually present and mapped in the same project.
and
"A non-read-only mapping must be defined for the sequence number field." -- although none of my mappings are read-only.
Am I missing something? Is there a tutorial or reference that goes through all this? I haven't found anything useful in the online help about actually obtaining a session. Would I be better off dropping back to JDev 9.0.3 and the un-integrated TopLink?

Answer 1

Hi John,
As I am sure you are already aware, the "Oracle XML Parser v2" library was not added to your classpath. This resulted in the both the "can not be resolved without a base URI" problem, as well as some of the other classpath problems you were experiencing. Given that the XMLParser library is added, you should not have to change the DTD URI. I have filed an bug denoting that the XMLParser library should be added to the Project classpath along with the TopLink library when a TopLink Mappings project is created.
Other library problems you are experiencing are likely due to the correct JDBC drivers not being added to your classpath. As multiple database types can be supported, this is something that the user will have to do manually for their given database.
In terms of the absolute path being specified in the session.xml. When a new session is created, the path of the toplink-deployment-descriptor.xml is specified by default if it exists as it is assumed that that is the deployment descriptor that will be used. The user can change this path to be relative in the Sessions Editor or point it to a different file. Still, the default behavior should be more intelligent and use a relative path if possible. I have filed a bug indicating this behavior.
As for the actual deployment problems you are experiencing. Could you provide me with more information, including the actual exceptions (w/ stack traces) that are thrown as well as the Project and associated resources?
Thanks for all of your feedback.
Best Regards,
John Bracken
[email protected]