Should ORM / RDBMS be used with Java desktop applications? [closed]

Question

I've been racking my brains on this one for a while. I've been living in the Django world for a while and it's hard to come back to Java.

I'm making a desktop Swing application that does some straightforward CRUD stuff, with some simple one-to-many relations on the models. I've been looking at ORM solutions like DataNucleus, but I'm put off by its 20mb of dependencies, reliance on XML and my unfamiliarity with all the Three-Letter-Acronyms.

All I'm looking to do is let the user fill in some fields, display them in a table, let them select/edit/delete the entries in a table, and save/open that data to a file.

Are ORM solutions overkill for this type of scenario? Should I just put them all in an ArrayList and write all of the CRUD stuff myself?

Answer 1

All those frameworks are created for the express purpose of eliminating boiler plate and replacing it with stable code that has been tested to death. Whether you are talking about ORM for a RDBMS or mapping/binding frameworks for XML they are 'almost' never overkill. They serve to lower your application's risk profile. The key acronym is DRY.