A review of Packt Publishing's Spring Data

Packt Publishing's Spring Data is their latest offering in the now familiar cookbook format covering the Spring Data support for JPA and Redis. The Kindle version was well laid out, which can be difficult for technical texts.

The cookbook uses a simple domain model for contact data to demonstrate the creation of a CRUD database and then steps the reader through creating operations using Native SQL, Java Persistence Query Language (JPQL) and the Criteria API. What I found most useful was being able to compare and contrast the pros and cons of each approach.

This section may be less suited to the novice it assumes a working knowledge of JPA. The cookbook could not be treated as a JPA tutorial or reference as other texts have greater coverage using more complex data models.

The chapters on Redis start with step-by-step instructions on configuring the connection to a Redis service using the Jedis, JRedis, RJC and SRP connectors. It then proceeds through to the implementing a CRUD application for the contact data and adding publish/subscribe notifications for updates.

By far the most beneficial thing I found in these chapters was how to use Spring Data Redis to add transparent caching support to a JPA repository.

Spring Data can be bought from Packt Publishing and Amazon.com.

posted by James Gemmell on Sat, 19 Jan 2013 at 13:46 | permalink | tags: java, jpa, redis, spring