====== Concise Object Relational Architecture ====== COBRA is an object persistence layer (Object Relational Mapper or ORM) written in the Java programming language. It is uses relational database technology to provided the persistent storage mechanism; however the store is fully encapsulated shielding programmers from the details of relational database access. ===== History ===== The original version of COBRA was inspired by the Javaworld article: Reflections on Java, Beans, and relational databases published in September 1997. The current implementation embodies ideas from Scott Ambler's paper on: Mapping Objects To Relational Databases and the sister paper: The Design of a Robust Persistence Layer for Relational Databases. COBRA has been used as the access mechanism for a large customer services database. This was backed by Postgresql then Oracle 8. COBRA effectively formed a middle tier, communicating with the RDBMS using JDBC and with the front end Web server using RMI-IIOP. COBRA was developed between 1997-1998 and covers some of the ground now offered by Application Servers such as JBoss and the EJB 3.0 specification. ===== Developments ===== COBRA is an open source project. It is provided 'as is'. Anyone can download the source if they find a feature is missing or wish to change the functionality they can do this themselves and even contribute the updates to the master source.