The fact that the OP's application logic and data access code are tightly coupled reveals he doesn't use Spring Framework to it's full potential. One of the fundamental ideas of Spring is to program by interfaces and decouple the actual implementation from the interface, and configure the implementation declaratively.

If he had designed his application properly, changing the data access implementation would be very unintrusive to the rest of the code. Actually, transactions could be also defined declaratively, further decoupling them from the data access code.

Whether or not you're rolling your own or reusing isn't as important as knowing the tools you're using!

If you're ever in the neighborhood of Ludington MI, you should check this monster out, it's pretty much the same idea but a tad bit larger than the ones in the article http://www.consumersenergy.com/content/hiermenugri d.aspx?id=31

This page provides a much better starting point. "Snazzy web hit counter" doesn't even begin to describe what it is. A hit counter is extremely simple and doesn't require a lot of resources in terms of minds or hardware. What they've done requires both.

What they've apparently built (I wish I had access so I could check it out) is a standard analytics model based on click stream traffic for websites and an infrastructure to support distributed web reports. Click stream analyisis for websites is not a trivial problem. The hardware required to host this given the reports they're generating and the data sizes they're working with has got to be huge. What they've built is probably pretty simple since the type of data they're tracking about your customers (whether the page was clicked) is pretty limited. I'm curious as to what exactly their script does - is it solely clicks or is tracking users over a session?

Of course if you subscribe to the google really is evil (or they want to make money) what they're going to eventually do is merge all of their traffic data (including gmail, google videos, etc.) to provide analytics on the customer the clickstream stuff is definately interesting, but the customer profile would be a lot more valuable.

They may even provide the click stream data for free and offer all of their services as well as consultation for developing custom data models for the merchant. This is a stretch but given their areas of expertise would make some sort of sense.

Wow ... you really think you understand what everyone in the world is thinking, don't you? I think your lack of faith in other people's intellect or their earnestness is either pure bullocks, plain elitism, or just a mere relfection of your utter misanthropy. It is a very sick assumption to make that other people delight in death because it supports their opposition to a political figure. Perhaps this is the way you think ... and you don't even realize you're writing your own unhealthy thoughts.