CDI Query Alpha 4 Released

There's been a while now since my last post on CDI Query, but that doesn't mean we haven't been busy working on it! Last week I've pushed another Alpha release to Maven Central, and I'm very curious about your feedback!

Summarizing the feature highlights since the last post:

• Entities: Support for entities defined in orm.xml descriptors, @IdClass and composite primary keys: this should close the gap for all kind of entities.

• Method expression have gotten some more love: First of all validation. As those expressions are not very stable once it comes to refactorings, they are now validated at extension initialization. Also there's now support for ordering and nested properties.

• Auditing: Keeping track of entity creation and change dates is often a requirement in enterprise applications. This is supported by simpy annotating your entities temporal properties with @CreatedOn or @ModifiedOn. 

• Extensions in the Criteria Support API: Allows now selections. There's also been a major cleanup with regards to separation of API and implementation. 

• Bulk operations - use modifying statements in a @Query annotation.

• Postprocessing of query methods with the QueryResult class. This will encapsulate the result of a method expression or a @Query annotation, and allows to add ordering, paging and other post processing dynamically.

• The EntityHome API, inspired by the Seam 2 application framework, helps you to easily connect your entities to the UI and implementing CRUD pages with a few lines of code.

There have already jumped a few people on board, providing great feedback, bugfixes and new features! Special thanks to:

• Jason Porter (bug fixes, Solder upgrade, support for PK related features and feature requests)
• Marek Smigielski (bug fixes, feature requests)
• Aaron Walker (API extensions)
• and various others, providing some food for thought - thanks guys!

So what's next? We're still in Alpha, and some features have been - frankly said - just been hacked in to try them out. So there is need for cleanups. Featurewise there is also a polish of the various APIs required, but a larger part could be improved support for stored procedures, and a Forge plugin (in case you don't know Forge - hurry up and install it!). Or whatever you feel is missing - looking forward to your Issues on GitHub!