Just getting started with using Hibernate, and I have a question. I am going to receive a large spread sheet of information that I would like to insert into a table.

The data will be very simple and have something like this:

name attribute1 attribute2

I understand how to persist the data to the database, but upon further thinking, I need to ensure that I do not insert the same name more than once.

I am seeking some advice, as to the best way for me to begin this simple task.

My thought was to grab a record, try and see if it exists in the table, if not save it, and just keep going. Or when using Hibernate, is there a more robust, or succinct solution.


Thanks,

set unique index in database for name field

I agree, let your DB do the heavy lifting for you - create a unique constraint (which creates an index/unique index in most DBs) on 'name'.

But you'll have to watch out for inserts though... remember that hibernate does not immediately execute SQL calls on a session.save() -> you'll need to do session.flush() to have it do that. At that point you can get constraint violated exceptions, so don't forget to catch those and continue.

spurcell , how many records are we talking about?

for this way only, I think that is better use pure jdbc - jdbc save sql command direct and user can catch exception (without commit after every insert)

Consider using session.replicate().

This method will check for you if an instance with the same id exists in the database. If so, an update() will take place, otherwise it will perform a save() (insert).

Other comments about how many records are you actually going to process are relevant. However, if they are really much, you can clear the session every, say, 1000 records in order to avoid OutOfMemory.

With batch update enabled and replicate() strategy I can't see how a raw JDBC solution could perform better than Hibernate.

I don't think that jdbc will be quicker (this case is trivial and it isn't important, but I can do quicker with jdbc with insert direct to srollable resultset - hibernate can't do direct insert/update/delete to scrollable resultset, for now) .
I think that I do quick job with jdbc - no POJO, no mapping and if I do it once then I will use JDBC