Separating adaptable persistence attributes through computational reflection

To receive persistence capabilities, applications usually must explicitly access database management systems, such as object-oriented databases or object-relational mapping products. The usual way of building an application is tangling its functional code with explicit structured query language (SQL) or object query language (OQL) persistence statements. This tangling has several drawbacks: deficiencies in source code legibility, maintainability, and portability; lack of persistence functionality reuse; and low adaptability of persistence attributes. Separating crosscutting concerns such as persistence from the main application code can reduce software complexity and facilitate concerns reuse. A prototype persistence system shows how to use computational reflection to completely separate and adapt application persistence attribute at runtime.