I'm using Hibernate 2.1.3 to persist the project I'm working on to a MySQL db. I have a collection class that I've written that maps a HashMap and adds some methods to it. I've used it in a few places and need to persist the classes that it holds.

Can I do this with a UserType or CompositeUserType? I've only seen how to persist basic types with these classes. Can I persist the contained HashMap in a UserType?

Alternately, is it possible (or sane) to write multiple mapping files for each case in which the class is used? It always has Calendars as keys, and some specific type of object as values, but the value objects change from use to use.

Any help is very much appreciated.

This was so much easier than I expected. Hibernate rocks (once you figure out how to use it)!

In case anyone else has the same question, I ended up using the component tag. I didn't have to write a UserType or even map the collection class. It makes sense (now) because it finally became clear that it wasn't an entity object.

Anyway, I added this to the hbm file of the class that uses my TemporalCollection class: