Question

I have an old table that I’m working with, which looks like this:

+------------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field            | Type         | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+------------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| BINARY_DATA_ID   | varchar(255) | NO   | PRI |         |       |
| BINARY_DATA      | longblob     | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
| BINARY_DATA_NAME | varchar(255) | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
+------------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+

The main problem with this is that the BinaryData Java class loads the BINARY_DATA column, even if I only require the BINARY_DATA_NAME. I know that the best way to architect this is to split the data from the meta-data (like the file name) so they live in separate tables. From there it’s trivial to make the data lazy-loaded. This is how it should have been done in the first place.

Unfortunately it may not be possible for me to do the above due to organizational constraints. As a workaround, is it possible to make that column lazy-loaded using some annotations instead of splitting things out into separate tables? I’ve modified the BinaryData class so that it has an inner static BinaryDataData class which is @Embedded and the attribute is @Basic(fetch=FetchType.LAZY):

@Entity
@Table
@Proxy(lazy=false)
@Inheritance(strategy=InheritanceType.JOINED)
public class BinaryData implements Serializable, Persistable<BinaryData>, Cloneable {

    private static final long serialVersionUID = /** blah */;

    @Id @Column @GeneratedValue(generator="uuid") @GenericGenerator(name="uuid", strategy="uuid")
    private String id;

    @Column
    private String binaryDataName;

    @Embedded
    @Basic(fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
    private BinaryDataData binaryData;

    @Transient
    private String cacheId;

    /**
     * Hibernate constructor
     */
    public BinaryData() { /* Creates a new instance of Attachment. */}

    public BinaryData(byte[] binaryData, String binaryDataName) {
        this.binaryData = new BinaryDataData(ArrayUtils.clone(binaryData));
        this.binaryDataName = binaryDataName;
    }

    /**
     * Returns the BinaryData byte stream.
     *
     * @return binaryData byte stream
     */
    @Embedded
    @Basic(fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
    public byte[] getBinaryData() {
        if (this.binaryData == null) {
            return new byte[0];
        }
        return binaryData.getActualData();
    }

    @Embeddable
    public static class BinaryDataData implements Serializable {
        @Column(length=32*1024*1024, columnDefinition="longblob", name="BINARY_DATA") @Lob
        private byte[] actualData;

        public BinaryDataData() { }

        public BinaryDataData(byte[] data) {
            this.actualData = data;
        }

        public byte[] getActualData() {
            if (this.actualData == null) {
                return new byte[0];
            }
            return this.actualData;
        }

        public void setBinaryData(byte[] newData) {
            this.actualData = newData;
        }

        @Override public boolean equals(Object obj) {
            if (this == obj) {
                return true;
            }
            if (obj == null) {
                return false;
            }
            if (!(obj instanceof BinaryDataData)) {
                return false;
            }
            final BinaryDataData other = (BinaryDataData) obj;
            if (!Arrays.equals(actualData, other.actualData)) {
                return false;
            }
            return true;
        }
    }

    /** onwards... */

Unfortunately this doesn’t work. The SQL that I’m seeing still shows a complete fetch of the object even if the binary data isn’t requested:

select ideaattach0_.BINARY_DATA_ID as BINARY1_9_, ideaattach0_1_.BINARY_DATA as BINARY2_9_, ideaattach0_1_.BINARY_DATA_NAME as BINARY3_9_, ideaattach0_.IDEA_BUCKET_ID as IDEA2_136_ from IDEA_ATTACHMENT ideaattach0_ inner join BINARY_DATA ideaattach0_1_ on ideaattach0_.BINARY_DATA_ID=ideaattach0_1_.BINARY_DATA_ID where ideaattach0_.BINARY_DATA_ID=?

Any ideas? Thank you.

Answer 1

From Hibernate, Chapter 19. Improving performance:

Lazy attribute fetching: an attribute or single valued association is fetched when the instance variable is accessed. This approach requires buildtime bytecode instrumentation and is rarely necessary.