Hey, this JDBC stuff really works!
I could really do without checked exceptions, though: every single time I call a JDBC function, I have to add four lines of try/catch wrapper code, because an SQLException could be thrown at any time. Sigh. And I can’t think of a good way to avoid that, given that I want to wrap the JDBC code in an abstraction layer as quickly as possible, so I need to translate exception types; occasionally, a try block covers multiple statements, but not very often.
I’m still not writing all the data out – for now, all I’m writing is the table mapping entity numbers to entity types. I was going to first write the code (using my abstraction layer, not the real JDBC stuff) that would add all the data for each entity to the appropriate table, but I realized that, if I started there, then it would be too long before I could verify my work via acceptance tests. (And, in particular, I’d be able to put off using JDBC for too long.) So I changed my focus to getting to JDBC calls verified with acceptance tests as quickly as possible; that was a good move, and I’m honestly amazed at how easy it was to get a passing acceptance test. It should be smooth sailing from here on out – the rest of the code shouldn’t involve any new tricks and will be easily unit-testable. (Though I will throw in acceptance tests as well, of course, being a good boy.)
Post Revisions:
- May 5, 2010 @ 20:24:25 [Current Revision] by David Carlton
- February 26, 2006 @ 17:43:00 by David Carlton
Posts
Grrr… API’s that throw exceptions. There ought to be an automated way to deal with this kind of mis-feature.
3/3/2006 @ 9:21 am
Throwing exceptions is good – the database connection could go south at any time, after all, and I’d rather have exceptions than return codes. And I would even be forced to concede that, if we’re going to make a checked exception / unchecked exception distinction, that the exceptions should be checked. I just don’t believe in the whole checked exception thing in the first place. (Though it is admittedly less of a misfeature in Java than in C++.)
I’m of two minds as to what I should do in my own code here – when I translate these exceptions into my own exception type, should I make my own exceptions be checked or unchecked? In the past, I’ve gone with the former, because in general I like to write code that’s idiomatic in the language that I’m using. But if I were to do that in this case, I would have to stick a throw spec on tons and tons of methods; this would in no way improve clarity, and given that I’m only planning to catch exceptions at the top level, it wouldn’t improve safety either.
3/3/2006 @ 9:26 am