store strings of arbitrary length in Postgresql - database

I have a Spring application which uses JPA (Hibernate) initially created with Spring Roo. I need to store Strings with arbitrary length, so for that reason I've annotated the field with #Lob:
public class MyEntity{
#NotNull
#Size(min = 2)
#Lob
private String message;
...
}
The application works ok in localhost but I've deployed it to an external server and it a problem with encoding has appeared. For that reason I'd like to check if the data stored in the PostgreSQL database is ok or not. The application creates/updates the tables automatically. And for that field (message) it has created a column of type:
text NOT NULL
The problem is that after storing data if I browse the table or just do a SELECT of that column I can't see the text but numbers. Those numbers seems to be identifiers to "somewhere" where that information is stored.
Can anyone tell me exactly what are these identifiers and if there is any way of being able to see the stored data in a #Lob columm from a pgAdmin or a select clause?
Is there any better way to store Strings of arbitrary length in JPA?
Thanks.

I would recommend skipping the '#Lob' annotation and use columnDefinition like this:
#Column(columnDefinition="TEXT")
see if that helps viewing the data while browsing the database itself.

Use the #LOB definition, it is correct. The table is storing an OID to the catalogs -> postegreSQL-> tables -> pg_largeobject table.
The binary data is stored here efficiently and JPA will correctly get the data out and store it for you with this as an implementation detail.

Old question, but here is what I found when I encountered this:
http://www.solewing.org/blog/2015/08/hibernate-postgresql-and-lob-string/
Relevant parts below.
#Entity
#Table(name = "note")
#Access(AccessType.FIELD)
class NoteEntity {
#Id
private Long id;
#Lob
#Column(name = "note_text")
private String noteText;
public NoteEntity() { }
public NoteEntity(String noteText) { this.noteText = noteText }
}
The Hibernate PostgreSQL9Dialect stores #Lob String attribute values by explicitly creating a large object instance, and then storing the UID of the object in the column associated with attribute.
Obviously, the text of our notes isn’t really in the column. So where is it? The answer is that Hibernate explicitly created a large object for each note, and stored the UID of the object in the column. If we use some PostgreSQL large object functions, we can retrieve the text itself.
Use this to query:
SELECT id,
convert_from(loread(
lo_open(note_text::int, x'40000'::int), x'40000'::int), 'UTF-8')
AS note_text
FROM note

Related

Is there a way to map a postgres array to a list without creating an additional table?

I start my application creating a database model. And I cannot understand if there is any way in hibernate-jpa to save a List of strings as an array.
If I simply try to save my
List<String> someLines;
as sql
some_lines text[]
I get an error that array cannot be represented as a List.
If I put an annotation #ElementCollection like
#ElementCollection
List<String> someLines;
another table some_elements is expected. The same happens If I additionally put an annotation #Column:
#Column(name = "some_lines")
#ElementCollection
List<String> someLines;
How do you usually save a simple List in DB (without creating an additional table)?

Read embedded entity from python ndb client

I am using the google cloud datastore python client to write an entity into the datastore which contains an embedded entity. An example entity might look like:
data_type: 1
raw_bytes: <unindexed blob>
values: <indexed embedded entity>
I checked the data from the console and the data is getting saved correctly and the values are present.
Next, I need to run a query from a python app engine application. I have represented the above as the following entity in my app engine code:
class DataValues(ndb.Model):
param1 = ndb.BooleanProperty()
param2 = ndb.IntegerProperty()
param3 = ndb.IntegerProperty()
class MyEntity(ndb.Expando):
data_type = ndb.IntegerProperty(required=True)
raw_bytes = ndb.BlobProperty()
values = ndb.StructuredProperty(DataValues)
One of the filters in the query depends on a property in values. Sample query code is as below:
MyEntity.query().filter(MyEntity.data_type == 1).filter(MyEntity.values.param1 == True).get()
I have created the corresponding composite index in my index.yaml
The query runs successfully but the resulting entity contains the embedded entity values as None. All other property values are present.
What can be the issue here ?
Add properties of DataValues entity as properties of the MyEntity.
This is a bit of a guess, but since datastore attributes are kind of keyed by both their name (in this case values) and the name of the "field type/class" (i.e. StructuredProperty), this might fix your problem:
class EmbeddedProperty(ndb.StructuredProperty):
pass
class MyEntity(ndb.Expando):
data_type = ndb.IntegerProperty(required=True)
raw_bytes = ndb.BlobProperty()
values = EmbeddedProperty(DataValues)
Give it a shot and let me know if values starts coming back non-null.
I struggled with the same problem, wanting to convert the embedded entity into a Python dictionary. One possible solution, although not a very elegant one, is to use a GenericProperty:
class MyEntity(ndb.Model):
data_type = ndb.IntegerProperty(required=True)
raw_bytes = ndb.BlobProperty()
values = ndb.GenericProperty()
values will then be read as an "Expando" object: Expando(param1=False,...). You can access the individual values with values.param1, values.param2 etc. I would prefer having a custom model class, but this should do the job.

Controlling NHIbernate search query output regarding parameters

When you use NHibernate to "fetch" a mapped object, it outputs a SELECT query to the database. It outputs this using parameters; so if I query a list of cars based on tenant ID and name, I get:
select Name, Location from Car where tenantID=#p0 and Name=#p1
This has the nice benefit of our database creating (and caching) a query plan based on this query and the result, so when it is run again, the query is much faster as it can load the plan from the cache.
The problem with this is that we are a multi-tenant database, and almost all of our indexes are partition aligned. Our tenants have vastly different data sets; one tenant could have 5 cars, while another could have 50,000. And so because NHibernate does this, it has the net effect of our database creating and caching a plan for the FIRST tenant that runs it. This plan is likely not efficient for subsequent tenants who run the query.
What I WANT to do is force NHibernate NOT to parameterize certain parameters; namely, the tenant ID. So I'd want the query to read:
select Name, Location from Car where tenantID=55 and Name=#p0
I can't figure out how to do this in the HBM.XML mapping. How can I dictate to NHibernate how to use parameters? Or can I just turn parameters off altogether?
OK everyone, I figured it out.
The way I did it was overriding the SqlClientDriver with my own custom driver that looks like this:
public class CustomSqlClientDriver : SqlClientDriver
{
private static Regex _partitionKeyReplacer = new Regex(#".PartitionKey=(#p0)", RegexOptions.Compiled);
public override void AdjustCommand(IDbCommand command)
{
var m = _tenantIDReplacer.Match(command.CommandText);
if (!m.Success)
return;
// replace the first parameter with the actual partition key
var parameterName = m.Groups[1].Value;
// find the parameter value
var tenantID = (IDbDataParameter ) command.Parameters[parameterName];
var valueOfTenantID = tenantID.Value;
// now replace the string
command.CommandText = _tenantIDReplacer.Replace(command.CommandText, ".TenantID=" + valueOfTenantID);
}
} }
I override the AdjustCommand method and use a Regex to replace the tenantID. This works; not sure if there's a better way, but I really didn't want to have to open up NHibernate and start messing with core code.
You'll have to register this custom driver in the connection.driver_class property of the SessionFactory upon initialization.
Hope this helps somebody!

Database : Table and mappings for a Matrix style table

I am working on a Spring-MVC using Postgres application in which I am trying to do a report generation form. Now, for this, I have to save the data for the form. But, the report has this matrix kind of part, which I don't know how to realize. Sure I can do it, but I want something optimized.
As you can see from the image, on left side, there are fields and each field has different values to be inserted as indicated.
As of now, I was able to come up only one Table as Parts and its class is mentioned below. But as each variable in the class will have 6 values, it will require me to create 6 tables and have some mapping. I want to avoid that. What can I do?
#Entity
#Table(name = "containment")
public class Containment {
#Id
#Column(name="containment_id")
#GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.SEQUENCE,generator = "containment_gen")
#SequenceGenerator(name = "containment_gen",sequenceName = "containment_seq")
private Long containmentId;
#Column(name = "parts_at_plant")
private String partsAtPlant;
#Column(name = "parts_at_logistics")
private String partsAtLogistics;
}
I am creating class, not writing database-tables directly. If someone wants to see above in SQL code, I am more than happy to write it. Thank you.

Adding a row to a table from the properties of a class

I have a class that represents the table of a db-row. Its properties are the columns of the table. I add a new row to the table with the following code:
Public Sub AddRow(oTestRow As TestRow)
Dim sql As String
With oTestRow
sql = String.Format("INSERT INTO TestTable " &
"(ArtNr, ArtName, ArtName2, IsVal, CLenght) " &
"Values ('{0}', '{1}', '{2}', {3}, {4})",
.ArtNr, .ArtName, .ArtName2, .IsVal, .CLenght)
End With
Using oConn As New OleDbConnection(m_ConnString)
oConn.Open()
Using oInsertCmd As New OleDbCommand(sql, oConn)
oInsertCmd.ExecuteNonQuery()
End Using
End Using
End Sub
That is just an example, but my classes have around 30-40 properties and this brings a very large and complex sql string.
Creating, editing or maintaining these sql strings for many classes could generate errors.
I am wondering if any compact way or method exists in order to add the whole object's istance (the properties of course) to the table "TestTable" without writing such a large sql string.
I created the TestRow in the way that its properties are exactly the columns of the table "TestTable" (with the same name). But I did not found in the ADO.NET anything that could be used.
If changing DB system is an option, you may wanna take a look at some document based no sql solution like MongoDB, CouchDB or especially for .Net RavenDB, db4o or Eloquera.
Here is a list of some of them.
for starters anything with inline queries is a bad practice (unless the need demands for e.g. you have tables defined in the db, and dont have access to the db to deploy procedures)
you have few options - for e.g. instead of handwriting the classes , use Entitiy framework a better alternative to Linq2Sql
if you want to stick with the tags in this question I would design this making the most of OO concepts. (this is a rough sketch, but I hope this helps)
public class dbObject
protected <type> ID --- This is important. if this has value, commit will assume update, otherwise an update will be performed
public property DBTableName // set the table name
public property CommitStoredprocedure // the procedure on the database that can do commit work
public property SelectStoredProcedure // the procedure used to retrieve the i
public dbObject construcor (connection string or dbcontext etc)
set dbConnection here
end constructor
public method commit
reflect on this.properties available and prepare your commit string.
if you are using storedproc ensure that you prepare named parameters and that the stored proc is defined with the same property names as your class property names. also ensure that storedproc will update if there is an ID value or insert and return a ID when the id value is not available
Create ADO.net command and execute. (this is said easy here but you need to perfect this method)
End method
end class
public class employee inherits dbObject
// employee properties here
public string name;
end employee
public class another inherits dbObject
//another properties
public bool isValid;
end department
usage:
employee e = new employee;
e.name = "John Smith";
e.commit();
console.WriteLine(e.id); // will be the id set by the commit method from the db
If you make baseclass correct (well tested) here, this is automated and you shouldnt see errors.
you will need to extend the base class to Retrieve records from the db based on an id (if you want to instantiate objects from db)

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