The heart of BeanUtils is a class called PropertyUtils, which provides a variety of static methods for getting and setting properties. The simplest usage gets a property such as a single string, integer, or object. For example, the call to get the name of an artist is
PropertyUtils.getSimpleProperty(artist, "name");
It is just as easy to set an artist's name
PropertyUtils.setSimpleProperty(artist, "name", "the new name");