Hi,

I have an Author and a User bean that are identical in fields, that share a subclass. I want to map them to the same table.

My ideal approach is that in each mapping file for the respective bean, I can enforce a particular discriminator value for a character property. Is this possible?

Otherwise, in the constructor for each bean, can I call the setter for the 'discriminator' with the correct value.
And make this setter protected.

Andy

How can two classes share a subclass?? Multi-inheritance is not possible in java.

My mistake. I meant base class Entity.

Do you mean this?

Well, what I've done is a base class Entity that defines all the getters and setters. One of them is for the isAuthor property. Then I create two subclasses, User and Author, which, in their constructor call setIsAuthor(false/true) according to which it is. Then I have two mapping files, one for Author and one for User, which map the same set of properties (all in Entity) to 2 completely different tables. Author and User only supply a specialized constructor, otherwise, inherit the base class properties. What I'm thinking is that I shouldn't even map isAuthor at all, and just return true and false, making it an unmapped property.

Yes, thats a possible solution. You should also think about using @MappedSuperclass instead of making your base-class to an entity, because you map the superclass properties to your child-tables.