Setting a relationship to a generic DataObject in order to log the primary key value

From: Mike Kienenberger (mkienen..mail.com)
Date: Tue Dec 20 2005 - 11:40:19 EST

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    I need to create audit log database records each time I commit
    changes. One of the fields in the audit record needs to be the
    primary key of the record being audited.

    In a past project I handled this by creating a relationship from my
    audit log entity to every other entity in existance, using the same
    "foreignRecordID" in my audit log. Then my class generation template
    would substitute in the correct name of the relationship to use.

    setForeignAccount(Account)
    setForeignAccountActivation(AccountActivation)
    setForeignACHProcessingQueue(ACHProcessingQueue)
    setForeignApplicationData(ApplicationData)
    setForeignBank(Bank)
    setForeignBankAccount(BankAccount)
    setForeignBatchJobData(BatchJobData)
    setForeignComment(Comment)
    setForeignConsolidatedAccount(ConsolidatedAccount)
    setForeignCreditCard(CreditCard)
    setForeignDataDictionary(DataDictionary)
    setForeignHelpTopic(HelpTopic)
    setForeignJustBilledAccount(JustBilledAccount)
    setForeignLocalization(Localization)
    setForeignPaperBillWarning(PaperBillWarning)
    setForeignPaymentHistory(PaymentHistory)
    setForeignPaymentInProgress(PaymentInProgress)
    setForeignPaymentMethod(PaymentMethod)
    setForeignPendingPayment(PendingPayment)
    setForeignProcessingResultAction(ProcessingResultAction)
    setForeignRecordKey(Integer)
    setForeignScheduledPayment(ScheduledPayment)
    setForeignSendPaperBillChange(SendPaperBillChange)
    setForeignStateProvince(StateProvince)
    setForeignUser(User)
    setForeignUserAccountRelationship(UserAccountRelationship)

    This was really ackward as it required adding a new relationship to
    the audit log whenever a new Entity was added, and invariably these
    new relationships didn't get created, and the application crashed.

    What I'd really like to do is be able to use
    "changeLog.setForeignRecord(DataObject dataObject)" generically, but I
    can't figure out a way to do this.

    I can do the following, but it fails on insert logging since the
    primary key doesn't exist yet.

            Object primaryKey = DataObjectUtils.pkForObject(dataObject);
            Number primaryKeyNumber = (Number)primaryKey;
            changeLog.setForeignRecordId(new Integer(primaryKeyNumber.intValue()));

    I really don't want to go back to the old methodology. It was painful
    with just a few tables, and now I've got hundreds of tables to deal
    with.

    The only idea I've come up with is to programmically create the
    relationships when the application starts up instead of defining them
    in the modeler.

    -Mike

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