[eclipselink-users] Eclipselink Best Practices

[Scott Frazier <swf127@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

    I have a question regarding best practices when using EclipseLink.  I'm doing some work for a firm that uses EclipseLink heavily.  I've been told that using primitive ints/longs for foreign keys and using zero as a sentinel value for NULL is the best/correct/"golden path" way to use the product.  I had assumed, a priori, that you'd require the use of wrapper classes so you could represent NULL with null, etc.   What is the best practice around this?  Are there tradeoffs between the two choices that might not be immediately obvious to the EclipseLink newbie?

    Thanks in advance.  I apologize if this has been covered elsewhere, but I couldn't find anything that sounded authoritative on the topic.

Regards,

S.