One of the primary benefits of using the Entity Engine over direct SQL calls to access data is that OFBiz abstracts the details of how data is physically stored, away from the user. When making a request for data through the Entity Engine, the user does not need to know where the data is physically located or how it is formatted. The Entity Engine handles all the details of data mapping for the user in real time.
Since physical data storage formatting varies widely from database vendor to vendor, the Entity Engine must map these variations to consistent data type values for use within the OFBiz framework.
The following steps have to be performed before adding or modifying data type mapping:
1. Entity engine field types are configured in separate field type definition files, one for each database in use. To determine which field type definition file to use, consult the
entityengine.xml
file. Each field type file is defined with afield-type-name
element...