Hi,

I got involved recently in a project where they've setup a fairly generic datamodel and have made a one-to-one mapping to a set of persistent classes.
On the other hand they've created a separate non-persistent domain model that reflects the business domain.

Between the two they are developing an interface layer that basically converts from the one structure to the other when saving or retrieving data to/from the db.

IMO we should try to go for one uniform persistent model that is also used in the business logic layer.
The main argumentation for having 2 models is to have an isolation between persistence and business layer.

Does anyone know if it is a viable approach to have 2 separate models ?
I'm bit afraid that we will be spending a lot of work on developing this interface layer between both models. Work that would otherwise be handled by Hibernate itself.

Tx for any suggestions, feedback...

Roger.

FWIW, I've been involved in project which used similar approach (separate persistent and business model) and found it very cumbersome. As you said, hibernate already takes care of mapping between object and relational model, so I can't see why one would need an extra layer to maintain. This mapping layer (Hibernate) also provides isolation between domain model and database.