Persistence of Enums is quite limited and would benefit from more flexibility

[andyjefferson]

Currently JDO and JPA allow persisting as "name()" (String) or "ordinal()" (Integer) of the Enum. DataNucleus (RDBMS) allows control over the ordinal value to be persisted, like this

public enum MyColour 
{
    RED((short)1), GREEN((short)3), BLUE((short)5), YELLOW((short)8);
    private short value;

    private MyColour(short value)
    {
            this.value = value;
    }
    public short getValue() 
    {
            return value;
    }
    public static MyColour getEnumByValue(short value)
    {
        switch (value)
        {
            case 1:
                return RED;
            case 3:
                return GREEN;
            case 5:
                return BLUE;
            default:
                return YELLOW;
        }
    }
}

@Extensions({
    @Extension(key="enum-getter-by-value", value="getEnumByValue"),
    @Extension(key="enum-value-getter", value="getValue")
   })
MyColour colour;

Maybe we would benefit from allowing control over either ordinal or name, so we could have

public enum Language {
  ENGLISH_US("en-US"),
  ENGLISH_BRITISH("en-BR"),
  FRENCH("fr"),
  FRENCH_CANADIAN("fr-CA");
  private String code;

  Language(String code) {
    this.code = code;
  }
  public String getCode() {
    return code;
  }
}

or something similar? Additionally it should be made available for ALL datastores not just RDBMS.