CodeFutures Support Blog

New FireStorm 2.0 beta release is now available from:

http://www.codefutures.com/products/firestorm/2.0/download/

From the release notes:

[b493] Contextual menus in the project tree view are now working for all platforms (they were not working on Mac in previous builds). On Mac OS X, they are triggered by a Control-click. (By default, the second button of a two-button mouse maps to Control-click in Mac OS X.) In Windows, the right mouse button is the standard trigger for contextual menus.

Posted by Andy Grove at 06:41 PM | Permalink

The latest build of FireStorm/DAO 2.0 Enterprise Edtion (beta) is now working for both JDBC and CMP code generation against WebLogic versions 6.1, 7.0, and 8.1

Posted by Andy Grove at 02:28 PM | Permalink

The README file in the 2.0 beta now includes a change log so please check read this when you download new builds.

In the latest build ...

[b483] Changed some default Java type mappings on importing a schema. JDBC types BIGINT, NUMERIC, DECIMAL with scale of zero (i.e. no decimal places) now only get mapped to int or long (or their object equivalents). JDBC types BIGINT, NUMERIC with a non-zero scale (i.e. does have decimal places) now always get mapped to the java.math.BigDecimal type.

[b483] When generating CMP finders for columns that are of type java.math.BigDecimal the EJB-QL finder definitions use the float primitive type since EJB-QL does not support java.math.BigDecimal. The generated DAO implementation code takes care of conversion from BigDecimal to float when the finders are called so this change is transparent to the user.

Posted by Andy Grove at 02:27 PM | Permalink

FireStorm/DAO 2.0 Standard Edition for JDBC now generates special finder methods for each table and view. This finder, known as the arbitrary SQL finder, has the following signature:

findByArbitrarySql(String sqlWhereClause, Object sqlParams[]);

Sample usage would be:

CustomerDao dao = CustomerDaoFactory.create();

Customer cust[] = dao.findByArbitrarySql(
"last_name = ?",
new Object[] { "Grove" }
);

Please note that this method should only be used where you need support for dynamic queries that are only known at runtime. If you need finders that use a fixed number of parameters and have a fixed SQL statement then you should define them as standard finders and generate specific code.

Posted by Andy Grove at 11:55 AM | Permalink

A new build of the 2.0 beta (build 436) is now available from:

http://www.codefutures.com/products/firestorm/2.0/

The main new feature in this build is that the main project view has now stabilized and allows tables, views, columns, finders, and custom dao objects to be created, modified, and deleted. There is also some basic validation of the project meta-data before code generation will run.

There will be daily builds of the beta uploaded to the site over the next few days as we complete the gui and validation functionality.

Posted by Andy Grove at 01:45 PM | Permalink

FireStorm/DAO 2.0 now supports Oracle and DB2 sequences for auto-incrementing primary key fields.

For more information, please see the 2.0 FAQ at:

http://www.codefutures.com/products/firestorm/2.0/faq/

Posted by Andy Grove at 03:55 PM | Permalink

FireStorm/DAO 2.0 now supports MySQL auto-increment columns. These columns are typically used to automatically provide unique values for a primary key.

Here is an example of a MySQL DDL script with an auto-increment primary key:

CREATE TABLE customer (
uid INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
first_name VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
last_name VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY(uid)
);

Once you have generated DAO code using FireStorm, the programming model for using this table is as follows:

CustomerDao dao = CustomerDaoFactory.create();

Customer cust = new Customer();
cust.setUid( null );
cust.setFirstName( "Joe" );
cust.setLastName( "Bloggs" );

CustomerPk pk = dao.insert( cust );

System.out.println( "Created customer with ID = " + pk.getUid() );

Posted by Andy Grove at 03:43 PM | Permalink

FireStorm/DAO v1.5 is the final 1.x release before we ship 2.0 later this year.

This version is built from the 2.0 codebase and has many advantages over version 1.2:

- Import complex SQL/DDL scripts for Oracle, DB2, MySQL, PostgreSQL
- Choice of mapping columns to primitive or object data types
- Finder statements can be fully customised to use any valid SQL syntax (requires manual editing of XML project file)
- Generated code uses numeric constants for column indexes for improved maintenance
- Generated DTO classes contain toString() method
- Ant scripts for code generation
- Simplified XML project file

FireStorm/DAO v1.5 can be downloaded from:

http://www.codefutures.com/products/firestorm/download/

Please note that version 1.5 uses the new 2.0 project file format and is NOT backwardly-compatible with version 1.0 through 1.2

Version 1.2 will remain available for download until 2.0 is released.

Posted by Andy Grove at 09:28 AM | Permalink

An early beta of the 2.0 release can now be downloaded from the following URL:

http://www.codefutures.com/products/firestorm/2.0/download

The current state of the release is as follows:

Importing schemas from SQL/DDL and from JDBC works well for Oracle and MySQL scripts. If you have any problems importing your SQL scripts please email a sample file to support@codefutures.com and we add it to our automated unit test suite.

Some of the configuration dialogs are not working intuitively so please be patient when setting up your data sources.

Code generation is working for both J2SE and J2EE (generated JSP pages have been tested successfully with JBoss 3.2)

Posted by Andy Grove at 07:27 PM | Permalink

We have made a couple of changes to the pricing of FireStorm/DAO as follows:

There is now a Personal Edition for small projects (up to 15 tables) that is available to purchase online for only $99.

The Standard Edition is still priced at $195 but now includes FREE support for 1 year.

The cost of Premium Support has been reduced from $78 to $39. Premium Support includes all of the benefits of Standard Support plus free upgrades to ALL versions of FireStorm during the support period.

The FireStorm online store can be found at:

http://www.codefutures.com/purchase

Posted by Andy Grove at 09:05 AM | Permalink

FireStorm/DAO v2.0 allows you to generate code at the command-line without loading the GUI.

Sample command-line:

firestorm -project mymoney.xml -target j2se -output mymoney-source

Integration with Ant-based build systems is just as easy:

< property name="firestorm.home" value="/home/Andy/firestorm-2.0"/>

< taskdef
name="codegen"
classname="com.codefutures.firestorm.ant.CodeGenTask"
classpath="${firestorm.home}/lib/firestorm.jar"
/>

< codegen
home="${firestorm.home}"
src="${firestorm.home}/projects/mymoney.xml"
target="j2se"
output="mymoney-j2se"
/>

Posted by Andy Grove at 03:05 PM | Permalink

Build 76 of the FireStorm/DAO 2.0 Beta has just been posted to the web site (if you want to know the location of the beta please email beta@codefutures.com)

The packaging of the release contains a different directory structure than previous releases and now includes a Windows batch file and Unix .sh script to launch the product.

Please delete or rename your current FireStorm 2.0 installation before installing this new build.

Posted by Andy Grove at 09:06 AM | Permalink