From all indications within the hibernate documentation it appears that it supports bean property type mappings, but when I attempt to use a nested composite identifier I can't figure out how to accomplish this. Here is an example of a mapping that I would like to be able to create.



I have searched high and low within the hibernate documentation on how to accomplish such a task and have been unable to figure out how to do so. I realize that one of my problems is that I am using a composite identity, which Hibernate's philosophy is generally against. :) But unfortunately the decision to use a composite identifier has already been made.

A solution to this problem is rather simple due to the good design of creating a reflection helper class. Here is a sample of a change to the ReflectHelper class that would make this possible.



Obviously this is pseudo code, but it displays the utilization of the PropertyUtils class(part of the Jakarta Commons) that can return simple, nested, indexed, mapped, and combined type of properties from a bean.

Please let me know if a change like this would be necessary / possible, or if there is another solution to this type of an example besides using a CompositeUserType. I find that the CompositeUserType does not offer enough dynamic flexibility when used on a large scale basis. Everything within the class must be hard coded.

Thanks in advance,

Dan

Hibernate does not support this, for various sensible reasons. Usually you can do it using nested <component> mappings, but this is not available in a composite id.

And we will NOT use slow, buggy beanutils for this! Our own reflection implementation is MUCH faster and more robust.

If it wouldn't be too much trouble please enlighten me as to why this is such an insensible approach? I really see no other work around for a nested compositeId such as this.

As for the performance of the Beanutils, I cannot attest to whether it is faster than your approach, but does it really matter since the operations are performed in a one time only initialization. From there on out you simply just store the method....correct me if I'm wrong. As far as the bugginess of this beanutils package is concerned, please elaborate?

Thanks again,

Dan