I am unclear about how the cascade attribute works in a many-to-many. If you have a categories that have a many-to-many relationship with items through the CATEGORIES_ITEM_JOINER_TABLE what cascade type would you use if you want to only affect the joiner table?

So i want it so if I add an item to the Categories' items set it would create a new joiner. If i delete one it would delete the joiner, but it wouldn't create a new item or delete an item? I would guess this is cascade all, but from some of reading it seems like this might be cascade none?


What would the proper cascade type be if I wanted it to save new items in addition to auto creating and deleting the joiner?

What if I wanted it to actually delete items? Is this all-delete-orphans?

Basically i am unclear as to whether the cascade option affects the joiner or the table it is joining too?