Hi,
i'm developing an applet based application and i would like to use hibernate..

which would be the best architecture for such application?
i suppose including hibernate in the applet is not the best way since
each user will have their own hibernate cache, etc.

i'll appreciate any help,
Gerardo

How about the applets sending and receiving their information through a centralized web service, which is in turn connected to your persistent store(s) using Hibernate?

this seems to me a better approach since i'm also concerned with the security issues of applets accesing directly the database.
So, any way to offer an interface between applet and database would be more appropriate.

however, since i don't know much about web services i wonder if the overhead of the web service is small enough...

The 2nd level cache will not be shared, but the first level cache (ie the session) can be kept opened and thus benefit a good user oriented cache.
Check the wiki on session strategies and the forum too.

If you were only developing the server-side stuff for the puposes of intercepting Applet requests, you might want to use something simpler or familiar since SOAP (and its development) has a bit of overhead to it. Some IDEs like WSAD 5.1 really help in this regard, but if you're hacking Axis code, etc. directly, be prepared for some blood and sweat.

However, SOAP web services offer the advantage of being mostly platform independant and are very strategic for future application-to-application connectors (i.e. nearly all enterprise application integrators can now talk SOAP, and you can find SOAP APIs in Perl, .NET and most other current languages). Who knows, maybe your data/service will become so popular that others will want to consume it? If you're using SOAP, you're in a better position to offer it up to them.

In any case, you'd be going in the right direction by creating a server-side broker to handle applet requests. Direct client-to-DB access is evil, not only for security, but also for loading, caching, location of business rules, size of the client, etc. Good luck!

Scott

thanks your comments have been very enlightening, and think i'll use some server side 'thing'...

the application is not meant to run beyond the boundaries of a LAN, given that, how appropriate would be to publish the hibernate's sessionfactory
in some JNDI context to share it?

You're welcome!

A JNDI-published sessionfactory is an interesting idea and workable if you keep the session lifespans short.

This does, however, mean that your applets will have to include the Hibernate API and that your business & DAO logic will also have to reside in the client tier. This'll make the applets big and possibly slow to download, but I can see how it could simplify some development, especially if you're more experienced with rich client development.

Scott

in fact that's the case, and i think i'll go with that option...

i really appreciate all your comments and salute you! :)

Gerardo