Display Lookup values from related ejb entities using JOIN FETCH

JOIN FETCH - The purpose of JOIN FETCH is to fetch the related objects from the database in a single query. So in this article, I'm trying to explain how can we use jpql JOIN FETCH and expose those attributes to EJB data control layer.

Take a scenario, where we need to build ADF tree based on departments,employees and location tables. While displaying the tree, root node should display departmentName along with city attribute which is stored in related object Location table.

In BC4J, this scenario can be implemented using Entity Objects facility provided in View Object layer. These entity objects are used by the view object for accessing the related objects attributes and will be exposed in data control layer automatically. In my previous post I have showed on "how to add attribute from related entity in view object".

Same behavior can be implemented in EJB using JOIN FETCH. Using this query improves the efficiency of iteration over the result Departments objects because it eliminates the need for retrieving the associated Locationobjects separately.So in single query related objects attributes is also fetched from the database.

You can download the sample workspace from here
[Runs with Oracle JDeveloper 11.1.2.0.0 (11g R2) + HR Schema]

Implementation Steps

Create Java EE Web Application with entities based on Departments, Employees and Location table, then create a session bean and data control for the session bean. Open the departments entity and alter the named query as below.

@NamedQuery(name = "Departments.findAll",
                             query = "select o from Departments o join fetch o.locations")

Note:- The query above returns Departments instances and guarantees that the locations attributes will already be fetched in the returned instances.

Now we need to expose the location attribute values to data control, create a Transient variable called "city" and add the below code in department entity.

@Transient
 private String city;
 
public String getCity() {
  return this.locations.getCity();
}

Note: Can create sample java client to check whether the city attribute value is coming in departments instance before proceeding to data control.

In the ViewController create index.jspx page, from data control palette drop departmentsFindAll->Tree as ADF Tree and in edit tree bindings select the attributes as shown in below image.

Run the index.jspx page. Now notice root node will display departmentName along with city attribute value also.