A
Abu Yahya
I have a class that instantiates a private member based on a value in a
configuration file.
The value is used to determine the class name.
I initially decided to use code similar to the following:
// class name comes from property file
String dbMgrClassName = props.getProperty("db.manager");
Class<?> k = Class.forName(dbMgrClassName);
db = (DB) k.newInstance();
db.init(props);
However, a colleague pointed out that using "new" is faster than using
"Class.forName().newInstance()". So, I changed the code to the following:
String dbMgrClassName = props.getProperty("db.manager");
if (dbMgrClassName.equals("DB2"))
db = new DB2();
else if (dbMgrClassName.equals("Oracle"))
db = new Oracle();
else if (dbMgrClassName.equals("SQLServer"))
db = new SQLServer();
else { // handle unrecognized
Class<?> k = Class.forName(dbMgrClassName);
db = (DB) k.newInstance();
}
db.init(props);
My question is: Does using if-else statements like the above really
improve performance? What is the best approach to instantiate classes
whose type you don't know at compile time?
configuration file.
The value is used to determine the class name.
I initially decided to use code similar to the following:
// class name comes from property file
String dbMgrClassName = props.getProperty("db.manager");
Class<?> k = Class.forName(dbMgrClassName);
db = (DB) k.newInstance();
db.init(props);
However, a colleague pointed out that using "new" is faster than using
"Class.forName().newInstance()". So, I changed the code to the following:
String dbMgrClassName = props.getProperty("db.manager");
if (dbMgrClassName.equals("DB2"))
db = new DB2();
else if (dbMgrClassName.equals("Oracle"))
db = new Oracle();
else if (dbMgrClassName.equals("SQLServer"))
db = new SQLServer();
else { // handle unrecognized
Class<?> k = Class.forName(dbMgrClassName);
db = (DB) k.newInstance();
}
db.init(props);
My question is: Does using if-else statements like the above really
improve performance? What is the best approach to instantiate classes
whose type you don't know at compile time?