Initiallly presented at Scala User Group in SLC, UT on 3 Sep 2014. Anorm is part of the Typesafe Play! framework stack. It has nice features, but is lacking performance. Relate is a new library, inspired by Anorm, whose performance is closer to the underlying JDBC library. This makes it a better candidate for enterprise and time sensitive workloads.

1. ANORM
Anormis Not an Object Relational Model

2. On SQL vs ORM:
“SQL is already the best DSL for accessing relational databases. We don’t need to invent something new. Moreover the SQL syntax and features can differ from one database vendor to another.”
--Play! Framework

3. CakePHPQuery Generation
$this->documents->find(‘all’, array( ‘conditions’ =>array( ‘Document.creator_id’ => 5) ) );
SELECT * FROM documents AS d LEFT JOINusers AS u ON d.creator_id= u.creator_idLEFT JOINfolder_entriesAS f ON d.id = f.document_idLEFT JOIN templates AS t ON t.id = d.template_idLEFT JOIN document_attributesAS a ON a.document_id= d.id LEFT JOIN documents_usersAS du ON du.document_id= d.id LEFT JOIN……… WHERE d.creator_id= 5;

4. ORM Generated Queries Suck

5. Using Anorm-SELECT
valuserParser= long(“id”) ~ str(“username”) ~ str(“password”) map {
case id ~ username ~ password => UserRecord(id, username, password)
}
SQL(""“
SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = {id}
""").on(
‘id -> 5
).as(userParser.singleOpt)(jdbcConnection)

6. Using Anorm-INSERT
SQL(""“
INSERT INTO users (username, password) VALUES ({username}, {password})
""").on(
‘username -> “matthew”
‘password -> “mypassword”
).executeInsert()(jdbcConnection)

7. AnormAnalysis
PROs
•Easy to use
•Works with all JDBC-compatible databases
•Only queries the tables, columns, and rows you need
•Good documentation and examples
CONs
•Play! Framework is dropping support
•Only recently added support for lists of things (IN clause)
•Extremely SLOW!

8. Relate
A lightweight database access layer for Scala

9. A Closer Look
Mark Siebert –Software Engineer at Lucid Software

10. Relate beats Anorm
•Extremely FAST!
•Uses Scala’s CanBuildFromfor creation of custom data structures
•Data Streaming
•Data Pagination

11. Benchmarks -SELECT

12. Benchmarks -INSERT

13. Thank You
Any Questions?

14. Links
•Relate Source: https://github.com/lucidsoftware/relate
•Relate Documentation: https://github.com/lucidsoftware/relate/wiki
•Relate Benchmarks: https://github.com/lucidsoftware/relate-benchmarks
•AnormDocumentation: https://www.playframework.com/documentation/2.3.x/ScalaAnorm
•We’re Hiring: https://www.golucid.co/jobs