Efficient implementation of recursive queries in major object relational mapping systems

Abstract

The following paper presents the effects of combining two technologies: object-relational mapping and SQL's recursive queries. Both technologies are widely used in modern software, and yet, modern ORM systems still lack the support for recursive database querying. The currently used methods for querying graph and hierarchical structures are either inefficient, difficult to maintain, or do not allow for any portability. The authors of the following paper propose extensions to the general functionality of modern ORM systems and present the results for two ORM systems: Hibernate for Java and Django-models for Python. With this extension programmers using one of those systems can benefit from the support for the recursive queries offered by various object-relational database management systems and write a maintainable code compliant with the used ORM standard. The proposed solution works with IBM DB2, Oracle and PostgreSQL DBMS and proved to be many times faster than the approaches currently used. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.