Re: BigInteger as @Id

[Craig L Russell]

Hi Kevin,

On Aug 24, 2007, at 5:30 AM, Kevin Sutter wrote:

Craig,

On 8/23/07, Craig L Russell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I think BigInteger should be supported by OpenJPA as a pk for an
Entity. If your requirements go beyond the domain of Long, what do
you do then?

a Long?  Or, are you speaking in a more general context and not just
BigInteger values?

Not exactly sure I understand what you mean by going "beyond the domain of Long". You mean what if the BigInteger value goes beyond the max value for

I meant what do you do if you want a numeric primary key and the key values are larger than fit into a Long. You can use a String but it might be more natural to use a BigInteger.

I'd like to see it standardized as a portable requirement for the

next JPA specification.

Agree.

Cool. Let's make it happen.

Craig

Kevin

Craig

On Aug 23, 2007, at 7:56 AM, Kevin Sutter wrote:

Hi,
Shouldn't BigInteger fields be allowed to be primary keys?
According to
section 2.1.4, the requirements on the @Id field are not real
specific.  It
says "should be"...

Section 2.1.4:  A simple (i.e., non-composite) primary key must
correspond
to a single persistent field or property of
the entity class. The Id annotation is used to denote a simple
primary key.
See section 9.1.8.

Also from Section 2.1.4:  The primary key (or field or property of a
composite primary key) should be one of the following types:

java.util.Date;
java.sql.Date. In general, however, approximate numeric types (e.g.,
floating point types) should
never be used in primary keys. Entities whose primary keys use
types other
than these will not be portable.
If generated primary keys are used, only integral types will be
portable. If
java.util.Date is
used as a primary key field or property, the temporal type should be
specified as DATE.

When I just attempted it, I got the following error:

<openjpa-1.0.0-SNAPSHOT-r420667:568164 fatal user error>
org.apache.openjpa.util.MetaDataException: Type "class
org.apache.openjpa.persistence.simple.AllFieldTypes" declares field
"bigIntegerField" as a primary key, but keys of type
"java.math.BigInteger"
are not supported.

Any reason for this limitation?  Looking at the ClassMetaData
class, it
looks like we are reading "should be" as "must be".  Should we
allow any of
the @Basic types?  Thoughts?

Thanks,
Kevin

any Java primitive type; any primitive wrapper type; java.lang.String;

Craig Russell

Architect, Sun Java Enterprise System http://java.sun.com/products/ jdo

408 276-5638 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
P.S. A good JDO? O, Gasp!

Craig Russell
Architect, Sun Java Enterprise System http://java.sun.com/products/jdo
408 276-5638 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
P.S. A good JDO? O, Gasp!

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