Every persistence capable class must provide metadata that describes their mapping to the database. The metadata is stored in an XML file with the extension .jdo. All persistence information is stored in this file. There is no additional file necessary.
Signsoft intelliBO is looking for the metadata associated with a class using a simple matching algorithm. Using the full qualified name of the class (including the package name) a search path is build to find the metadata.
For example, if you define the class com.signsoft.Person as persistence-capable, the following search path is used:
com/signsoft/Person.jdo
com/signsoft.jdo
com.jdo
The metadata file for a persistence-capable class must be loadable as a resource using the same classloader that was used to load the class itself.
You may describe more than one class in one metadata file. For example, the file com/signsoft.jdo may contain the metadata for all persistence-capable classes in the package com.signsoft and the sub-packages.
Please note that it is an error to provide a metadata file with the same name as a class but without containing this class. For example, Signsoft intelliBO will report an error if the file com/signsoft/Person.jdo does not contain the persistence description for the class com.signsoft.Person.
You may also store the metadata for the classes of a package in a file called package.jdo. In this case, this file is located in the directory of the classes.