Java EE (Java Enterprise Edition) General Discussion

The application on which I am working deploys the JavaServer Faces, Spring and Hibernate frameworks.

We are going to use the "transfer object" to move data between J2EE tiers from the front end to the back end and vice versa. In addition, data "types" may need to be converted --

At the front end, the "type" of the data that are entered by users may not match that in the database table. For example, checkboxes may be marked or left blank by users. The "type" of the checkboxes is "boolean" in the JSF backing bean. However, we have either "Y" or "N" for the corresponding field in the database table.

The JSF backing bean holds data as well as controller functionality. Of course, the transfer object holds data only.

With regard to class properties, Is the transfer object an exact copy of the JSF backing bean? And at which tier the data are converted to match their correspoding "types" in the database tables?

We also have the "data objects" which are exact representation of database tables.

Thanks for your advices.