I have a couple of use cases with my domain model that require the ability to save a parent object and cascade the save to child objects and delete a parent object and cascade delete all child objects. However, I have another use case the dictates updating just the parent object and only the parent object, leaving the child objects as they are.

What would be the best way to handle these three cases in terms of the cascade attribute on the parent-child relationships and what would that mean for the code?

Thanks!


Hibernate version:2.1.7