Question

I am using Spring JdbcTemplate with the DAO pattern to access a database. Instead of creating the database tables manually, I am looking for a way to generate the tables in the DAO layer.
I understand that I can use the JdbcTemplate to execute statements, I am only looking for the right place to do it.

Is there a best practice for that?

Answer 1

Slightly offtopic:

Is it absolutely necessary that you need to execute the DDL commands from within your code? In fact I do think it is a good idea to have separation between db admin and db usage. Our Oracle database security setup here is actually set up so that the tables are set up using a different database user (DB_OWNER), than the one running the SELECTs, INSERTs, DELETEs are run by DB_USER.

This prevents accidentially deleting tables or modifying the schema and also allows the DB_USER to be setup such that only the privileges that are absolutely necessary are granted, which adds a layer of security.

I suppose it depends on the nature of your service/application, but think about the benefit of creating the tables inside the code (and whether a possible bug in the DDL code could accidentially destroy production data).