DAO pattern and Java Persistence API
Hi
This is a question for anyone who might be familiar with the standard DAO design pattern and the Java Persistence API (JPA - part of EJB3). I'm new to this technology, so apologies for any terminology aberrations.
I am developing the overall architecture for an enterprise system. I intend to use the DAO pattern as the conceptual basis for all data access - this data will reside in a number of forms (e.g. RDBMS, flat file). In the specific case of the RDBMS, I intend to use JPA. My understanding of JPA is that it does/can support the DAO concept, but I'm struggling to get my head around how the two ideas (can be made to) relate to each other.
For example, the DAO pattern is all about how business objects, data access objects, data transfer objects, data sources, etc relate to each other; JPA is all about entities and persistence units/contexts relate to each other. Further, JPA uses ORM, which is not a DAO concept.
So, to summarise - can DAO and JPA work together and if so how?
Thanks
P.S. Please let me know if you think this topic would be more visible in another forum (e.g. EJB).
