"Hiding" records with delete status

Question

Hi,
In my project we use logical deletion from the DB, meaning that records have an is_deleted column.
Whenever I want to logically delete a record I just need to set the is_deleted field to 1.
The problem is as follows:
I have two objects A,B and to tables T_A and T_B that relates to these objects respectively.
Both objects have is_deleted field, and A contains a list of B objects.
When getting from A the list of Bs it returns also the ones with is_deleted=1.
What is your recommendation to solve this problem?
Is there a way of telling toplink not to load these records at all?
Thanks,
Lior.

Answer 1

You can either filter the deleted objects for the specific mapping or for all queries for the class.
To filter all queries for a class you can use a descriptor additionalJoinExpression. This is an expression that can be set in a descriptor's query manager, this feature is only available through the code API, so you need to use a descriptor amendment method to define it from the Mapping Workbench.
Example:
ExpressionBuilder builder = new ExpressionBuilder();
descriptor.getQueryManager().setAdditionalJoinExpression(
builder.getField("A.IS_DELETED").equal(1));
This will cause all queries for the A class to filter out deleted objects.
If you only wanted the filter on the A->B relationship mapping you could use a mapping selectionCriteria that filters on the is_deleted flag. Refer to the follow thread for an example of a mapping selectionCriteria filter.
Filtering results on the child vector