JReq: Database queries in imperative languages

Abstract

Instead of writing SQL queries directly, programmers often prefer writing all their code in a general purpose programming language like Java and having their programs be automatically rewritten to use database queries. Traditional tools such as object-relational mapping tools are able to automatically translate simple navigational queries written in object-oriented code to SQL. More recently, techniques for translating object-oriented code written in declarative or functional styles into SQL have been developed. For code written in an imperative style though, current techniques are still limited to basic queries. JReq is a system that is able to identify complex query operations like aggregation and nesting in imperative code and translate them into efficient SQL queries. The SQL code generated by JReq exhibits performance comparable with hand-written SQL code. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.