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# What is TopLink?

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Oracle TopLink builds high-performance applications that store persistent object-oriented data in a relational database. It successfully transforms object-oriented data into either relational data or Extensible Markup Language (XML) elements.

TopLink Runtime Architecture

Description of "TopLink Runtime Architecture"

Using TopLink, you can integrate persistence and object-transformation into your application, while staying focused on your primary domain problem by taking advantage of an efficient, flexible, and field-proven solution (see "Solving the Object-Persistence Impedance Mismatch").

TopLink is suitable for use with a wide range of Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and Java application architectures (see "TopLink Application Architectures"). Use TopLink to design, implement, deploy, and optimize an advanced, object-persistence and object-transformation layer that supports a variety of data sources and formats, including the following:

- Relational–for transactional persistence of Java objects to a relational database accessed using Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) drivers.

- Object-Relational–for transactional persistence of Java objects to special purpose structured data source representations optimized for storage in object-relational databases such as Oracle Database.

- Enterprise information system (EIS)–for transactional persistence of Java objects to a nonrelational data source accessed using a J2EE Connector architecture (J2C) adapter, and any supported EIS record type, including indexed, mapped, or XML.

- XML–for nontransactional, nonpersistent (in-memory) conversion between Java objects and XML Schema Document (XSD)-based XML documents using Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB).

TopLink includes support for container-managed persistence (CMP) containers from a variety of vendors–such as Oracle Containers for J2EE (OC4J), IBM WebSphere application server, and BEA WebLogic Server–and support for base classes that simplify bean-managed persistence (BMP) development.

The extensive suite of development tools that TopLink provides, including Oracle TopLink Workbench, lets you quickly capture and define object-to-data source and object-to-data representation mappings in a flexible, efficient metadata format (see "Understanding TopLink Metadata").

The TopLink runtime lets your application exploit this mapping metadata with a simple session facade that provides in-depth support for data access, queries, transactions (both with and without an external transaction controller), and caching.

For more information about TopLink, see "TopLink Key Features".