iBATIS 2007: A book, DAO deprecated and iBATIS 3.0

[Clinton Begin <cl...@gmail.com>]

Hi everyone,

Three fairly significant things happened to kick 2007 off with a bang for
iBATIS. I thought they were significant enough to warrant a cross-posted
broadcast to the lists (please be judicious with responses by only
responding to the list that is appropriate if you have questions etc.).
This information is also available on the homepage.

iBATIS in Action Released

A book for iBATIS? No way! Yes way. The book is here. This is the first
edition, targeting primarily the Java platform. But it's definitely useful
for .NET and even Ruby users, even if only to understand the concepts and
and ideas behind iBATIS. Everything else is just syntax. Some people may
wonder if we're just trying to make money by selling documentation (sounds
familiar to some no doubt). But trust us, writing technical books is NO way
to make money! We did this for you, so you'd have a definitive guide to read
from instead of wading through various internet resources. I think we're
more worried about the Amazon.com comments than the sales... ;-) I (Clinton)
really want to say what a fantastic experience it was to work with Brandon
and Larry on this project. You guys did a fantastic job.  You can buy the
book in PDF or print at http://www.manning.com/begin/

DAO Deprecated and Made Available Separately

This is a little late notice, but iBATIS for Java 2.3 has enough votes to go
GA now, so I figured it would be good to note here. Part of that vote means
that the DAO framework has indeed been deprecated. Deprecated doesn't mean
dead. Many people can and will continue to use it. In fact, it will be a bit
cleaner because it's made available separately so you can feel more
comfortable changing it if you need to. Feel free to take the code and make
it your own. Or just use it as is until it gets too old (it's pretty easy to
switch iBATIS DAOs to Spring DAOs if and when the time is right). We've made
the Java DAO framework permanently available on the Java downloads page.
Deprecated basically means we just won't be adding any features to it in the
future, which is pretty much the same way it's been for a couple of years --
I guess it's perfect. ;-) Kidding.  The book also talks about DAOs both
specifically for iBATIS and in general as well, in case you do want to write
your own DAO framework for your project, or use Spring DAO.  I believe
Gilles and the iBATIS.NET team have also supported the idea of deprecating
the iBATIS DataAccess framework as well, allowing them to focus 100% on the
DataMapper, where most of the value is.  The DAO framework will always be
available at http://ibatis.apache.org/javadownloads.cgi

iBATIS 3.0

As a team we've started a wiki whiteboard to discuss the future and the next
version:  iBATIS 3.0.  New features in both Java and C#, as well as the
influence of Ruby and Rails will allow us to build an amazing modern
framework that still holds true to the iBATIS core values.  Have a look at
the wiki and please post your thoughts in the comments section.  The
whiteboard can be found on the wiki, or by clicking this direct TinyURL
link:  http://tinyurl.com/2tbs46

Best regards,

Clinton Begin