Introduction

We have already seen in Chapter 2, Understanding the Plugin Framework, that JIRA uses the Ofbiz suite's Entity Engine module to deal with database operations. OfBiz stands for Open For Business and the Ofbiz Entity Engine is a set of tools and patterns used to model and manage entity-specific data.

As per the definition from the standard entity-relationship modeling concepts of a relational database management system (RDBMS), an entity is a piece of data defined by a set of fields and a set of relations to other entities.

In JIRA, these entities are defined in two files, entitygroup.xml and entitymodel.xml, both residing in the WEB-INF/classes/entitydefs folder. entitygroup.xml stores the entity names for a previously-defined group. If you look at the file, you will see that the default group in JIRA is named default; you will find this defined in the entity configuration file, which we will see in a moment. entitymodel.xml holds the actual entity definitions, the details of...