I have a problem with one-to-many bidirectional relationship. I can see the insert statements being echo'd to the system console but the records are not actually getting inserted into the 'many' table.

I am committing and flushing the session and no exceptions are thrown.

Any ideas?

If you see the insert statements and its not ending up in the database then you are not using transactions, rolling back the transaction or the database may not have transactions (MySQL in none Innodb mode). If you had provided a simple code snipet then we could possibly suggest further ideas.

SessionFactory sessionFactory = new Configuration().configure().buildSessionFactory();
Session session = sessionFactory.openSession();

Transaction tx = session.beginTransaction();
Employee employee = (Employee)session.load(Employee.class, "1");
Set jobs = employee.getJobs();
if (jobs == null){
jobs = new HashSet();
employee.setJobs(jobs);
}

Job job = new Job();
job.Name = "Work";
jobs.add(job);

session.save(employee);
tx.commit();
session.flush();

snippet from the hibernate file on the Employee end:
<class name="Employee" table="Employee" >
<id name="employeeId" column="employeeId" type="java.lang.String" unsaved-value="undefined">
<generator class="assigned"/>
</id>
<set name="jobs" inverse="true" cascade="all">
<key column="jobId" />
<one-to-many class="Job" />
</set>
</class>

snippet from the hibernate file on the Job end:

<id name="jobId" column="jobId" type="java.lang.Integer">
<generator class="identity"/>
</id>
<many-to-one name="employee"
column="employeeId"
not-null="true" />