need advice on enum and attribute structure.

bryanhunt · **Posted:** Tue Jul 27, 2004 8:21 am

Hello,
I am really uncertain of the best way to design and I would
appreciate the advice of anyone on this list.

I work alone so I don't really have a colleague to ask this
question to.

In the application that I am working on there is an entitity for a house.

The house has a lot ( 25 + ) attributes.

Now a lot of these attributes (15) will not be applicable to every house.
ie pool, tennis court, charges etc etc

Here is an example.

A house may have a swimming pool, no swimming pool or the option to
build a swimming pool.

If it does have a swimming pool or the option to build a swimming pool
then there will have to be an explanation, ie "there is a small 5m pool".

Now I am using the PersistentCharacterEnum
( http://www.hibernate.org/203.html ) pattern to hold the enum.

It works great by the way !

My dilema is where should I put the description.

Should I create a house (0 .. 1) swimmingPool mapping + have
an attribute for whethere there is , isn't or there is an option to
build a swimming pool.

I really can't make up mind about the best approach and I want
to make sure I make the right decision.

Any advice appreciated .

Regards

Bryan

michael · **Posted:** Tue Jul 27, 2004 9:09 am

I'd rather create an 1-n association from House to "Option" or something like that where Option is like

Code:

class Option {
     OptionTypeEnum optionType;
     String description;
}

Sounds like a good case for a component-set mapping.

bryanhunt · **Posted:** Tue Jul 27, 2004 9:36 am

Thank you Michael, that is what I thought as well but just wanted to ask
someones opinion before I went ahead with it.

Best Regards

Bryan