I wonder when specifying a one-to-many I have something like

<set
name="Values"
order-by="DATA_VALUE"
<key column="NAME"/>
<one-to-many class="com.xyz.hibernate.model.Value"/>
</set>


Why is Hibernate not using/allowing to specify the FK as the property name instead of the column name ?

In the many-to-one or one-to-one there is an option of specifying the association to the fk as a property name and not a column name.

This is not a problem - I just wonder why ? Historic ?

So the above eaxmple could be spcified as

<set
name="Values"
order-by="DATA_VALUE"
<property-ref="serialName"/>
<one-to-many class="com.xyz.hibernate.model.Value"/>
</set>