We are considering migrating to wm and have an architecture/design question for the group. We are coming from an n-tier background and are accustomed to layers:
Presentation Layer
Business Objects Layer
Data Access Objects (DAO) Layer
DBMS
Does wm support or promote the use of layers so that minor changes in the DBMS schema do not require changes further up in the application or services? If so, what mechanisms/software packages does wm use for layering between the DBMS and the rest of the application?
Naturally we are hoping for something that is somewhat automated so we do not have to hand-craft this ourselves.
To my understanding, webMethods does not offer any kind of DAO abstraction. It offers a jdbc adapter to interact with some jdbc-enabled database, where the adapter provides facilities for insertion, deletion, update, etc. via a GUI where you configure the queries. The queries can be generated by wm or written by yourself. Changing a db field name requires only a few clicks.
My opinion is that database schema refactoring is a bit overrated, how often do you change your schema? From the service point of view, all you care is what data goes on to where and how, so I think it’s natural that the primary concern of wm products is not db abstraction.