Session Facade design and TopLink objects

Question

Hi, we are just about to start using Toplink as our ORM tool. Ideally we want to wrap all business logic behind stateless session bean facades. So instead of BMP entity beans we are thinking of encapsulating the relevant Toplink objects in each facade and querying, updating that object when the session facade bean is instantiated.
We are using Weblogic 70. Example code:
e.g. MySessionBean implements sessionbean...
     MyTopLinkObject myObject = null;
     public void populateObject(String myID) throws java.rmi.RemoteException {
          try {
               MyTopLinkObject myObject = new MyTopLinkObject(myID);
          catch (Exception e) {
     public void setMyTopLinkObjectsName(String name) {
     //persist this change via the toplink object...
     myObject.setName(name);
Then in MyTopLinkObject:
public class MyTopLinkObject {
     private String myID;
     private String myName;
public MyTopLinkObject(String myID) {
          build(myID);
public void build(String myID) {
          //read TOPLINK cache and populate this MyTopLinkObject name etc
public void setName(String myName) {
     //persist this change...
     this.myName = myName;
// more gets sets
I will then want to update MyTopLinkObject data in for example in calling. MySessionBean.setMyTopLinkObjectsName("my name") from the remote interface on the client.
So what I want to know is how do I can I do this efficiently. I'm too too versant with TopLink caches etc. For example to read the cache do I have to pass thru a TopLink client/server Session to each Session Facade bean so the cache is available for that read, update etc?
Any other tips is using this design would be appreciated!
Thanks in advance,
J

Answer 1

Don, thanks for ur advice yet again.
I think now I am getting a better grasp of how TopLink should be used. However there is very little doco out there in terms of using TOPLInk in as EJB session facade scenario.
After your advice my thoughts are to provide something like the TOPLInkFactory object as you say which will encapsulate the ServerSession TOPLink API and provide more fine grain access to the TOPLInk API. e.g. instead of having to create a ClientSession in each client call b4 getting a UnitOfWOrk, this factory class would provide a method to do this directly:
public final class TOPLinkFactory {
     private static ServerSession serverSession = null;
     private static final String TOPLINK_CONFIG_FILE = "C:\\test.xml";
     private static final String TOPLINK_SESSION = "toplink";
     public TOPLinkFactory() throws Exception {
          super();
     private static ServerSession createServerSession(ClassLoader cl) throws Exception {
          try {
          Project builderProject = XMLProjectReader.read(TOPLINK_CONFIG_FILE, cl);
     serverSession = (ServerSession)builderProject.createServerSession();
          serverSession.login();
               return serverSession;
          catch (Exception e) {
          return null;
     public static UnitOfWork getUnitOfWork(ClassLoader cl) {
          try {
               return createClientSession(cl).acquireUnitOfWork();
     public static ClientSession createClientSession(ClassLoader cl) throws Exception {
          try {
               if (serverSession == null) {
serverSession = createServerSession(cl);
ServerSession s = (ServerSession)SessionManager.getManager().getSession(TOPLINK_SESSION, cl);
               return serverSession.acquireClientSession();
          catch (Exception e) {
          return null;
Then in my Session EJBs I could write a method like this where Thing is a TOPLInk object mapped to the thing table:
     public boolean setThingStatus(String thingID) {
ExpressionBuilder builder = new ExpressionBuilder();
Expression expression = builder.get("THING_ID").equal( Integer.parseInt(thingID));
ClientSession s = TOPLinkFactory.createClientSession(this.getClass().getClassLoader());
Thing thing = (Thing) s.readObject(Thing.class, expression);
UnitOfWork uow = TOPLinkFactory.getUnitOfWork(this.getClass().getClassLoader());
Thing thingClone = (Thing)uow.registerObject(thing);
thingClone.setStatus("WITH JASON");
TOPLinkFactory.commitAndReleaseUnitOfWork(uow);
return true;
Now if the above looks OK and there are no Thread/Session issues that you could make me aware of (or perhaps you would encourage using a full Singleton pattern instead).
I have another question in relation to ClassLoaders. In this architecture I have been passing around the ClassLoader (as above) to the TOPLInkFactory methods to create the unit of works etc... Is this necessary? Or could I avoid it?
Also I think some people in my team are thinking its a good idea for all TOPLink business objects to extend an abstract base class that contains this behaviour and provides these TOPLinkFactory methods. I no expert on TOPLInk but I would have thought this code should not be coupled with the TOPLink business objects for reasons such as:
1) Why should a TOPLink Person object (attributes name, age etc) e.g. extend a class with TOPLink API methods and attributes - I just don't see the logic there as I thought TOPLink was to be non-intrusive. For example a Person object should not encapsulate a ServerSession object and nor does it need to. To this end they are then coupled and if for example we wanted to move these Person objects to work with another persistence framework then they would have to be rewritten to remove all TOPLInk attribute/method references
2) I would have thought accessing the TOPLInk API is only necessary when the client code needs to invoke calls to the database for reads and updates. i.e. that's where you start getting your sessions, unit of works etc. Like in the setThingStatus Session EJB method (i.e. the client code) above and NOT in your business methods of for example the TOPLink Person object?
Please tell me if I am mistaken!
If you could clear some of this up it would be great.
Regards,
Jason