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| Lightweight Persistence |
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| <span class="emphasis"><em>Persistent data</em></span> is information that can outlive the program |
| that creates it. The majority of complex programs use persistent data: GUI |
| applications need to store user preferences across program invocations, web |
| applications track user movements and orders over long periods of time, etc. |
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| <span class="emphasis"><em>Lightweight persistence</em></span> is the storage and retrieval of |
| persistent data with little or no work from you, the developer. For example, |
| Java serialization |
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| is a form of lightweight persistence because it can be used to persist Java |
| objects directly to a file with very little effort. Serialization's capabilities |
| as a lightweight persistence mechanism pale in comparison to those provided by |
| JPA, however. The next chapter compares JPA to serialization and other available |
| persistence mechanisms. |
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