I have group table and role table and intersection table that links
group and role (lets say grouprole with groupid and roleid)

I have the following in my mapping file for group

<set name="roles" table="grouprole" lazy="true" >
<key column="groupid" />
<many-to-many class="Role" column="roleid" />
</set>


When I select my group object and sebsequently insert and remove roles
from the collection then update the group object it deletes from the grouprole table and does inserts for any new role that I created . Perfect. Exactly what I want. My question why does this happen if I don't have cascade="save-update" for that set defined in my mapping file? I thought this was nesscary for all collection tables to be update with the parent object .

Thanks again

No Hibernate update the association, not the object on the other side.