zero configuration with hibernate?
When looking into Ruby on Rails, one of the nice things about it, is the almost complete lack of configuration. A domain object in Rails is ‘automagically’ able to be persisted. Even something like a database table name is ‘guessed’ from the class name itself rather then the programmer providing the information in some sort of configuration.
Compared to Hibernate, arguably the best persistence framework for Java, where configuration is an absolute necessity, Ruby on Rails with ActiveRecord is pretty dang nice.
The question is, why can’t the same exist in Hibernate or in some other Java persistence framework? Why can’t we learn something from the Ruby community and Ruby on Rails, and apply it to Java?
One could argue that you need a dynamic language to do what is possible with Ruby on Rails. Is this really true? Why do java apps need so much configuration? How can we create systems that are able to guess at the configuration that is needed by inference and by having nice defaults and providing hooks where configuration customization is required?
Hey Jon did’t know you are reading this too :0. Greets