I've been trying different ways to do this, but just can't seem to figure it out. I have two different objects, represented in this way ...

Parent - FoodGrpLst
Child - FoodSubGrpLst

The mapping files for these classes is as follows..

for FoodGrpLst...
<class name="webapp.lists.FoodGrpLst" table="FOOD_GROUPS" mutable="false">
<id name="foodGroupID" column="FOOD_GROUP_ID">
<generator class="native"/>
</id>
<property name="foodGroupNameE" column="FOOD_GROUP_EN_NAME"/>
<property name="foodGroupNameF" column="FOOD_GROUP_FR_NAME"/>
</class>

for FoodSubGrpLst...
<class name="webapp.lists.FoodSubGrpLst" table="FOOD_SUBGROUPS" mutable="false">
<id name="foodSubgroupID" column="FOOD_SUBGROUP_ID">
<generator class="native"/>
</id>

<property name="foodSubgroupNameE" column="FOOD_SUBGROUP_EN_NAME"/>
<property name="foodSubgroupNameF" column="FOOD_SUBGROUP_FR_NAME"/>

<many-to-one name="foodGroup"
class="webapp.lists.FoodGrpLst"
column="FOOD_GROUP_ID" cascade="none"/>
</class>

The class parameter declarations for FoodSubGrpLst starts off like this ..

public class FoodSubGrpLst {

private Long foodSubgroupID;
private String foodSubgroupNameE;
private String foodSubgroupNameF;

private FoodGrpLst foodGroup = new FoodGrpLst();

private Long foodGroupID;
.
.
.
}

In my DAO for FoodSubGrp i would like to retrieve a collection of FoodSubGrp's based on a FoodGrp ID.

The method for this looks like this ...

public Collection getFoodSubGroupsbyFoodGroupID(Long foodGroupID, boolean lock) throws DBException {

Session session = HibernateUtil.getSession();
FoodSubGrpLst foodSubgroup = null;
Collection foodSubgroupList = null;

try {
Criteria crit = HibernateUtil.getSession().createCriteria FoodSubGrpLst.class);
crit.add(Expression.eq("foodGroup", foodGroupID));
foodSubgroupList = crit.list();
}
catch (HibernateException ex) {
}
return foodSubgroupList;
}

On the line crit.add(Expression.eq("foodGroup", foodGroupID)); is where the problem is. "foodGroup" is the parameter in my mapping file that maps to the foreign key FOOD_GROUP_ID, however in my FoodSubGrpLst object it is represented as an object ...so I am thinking this is causing some problems. Anyone know a correct way to do what I'm trying to do?

Any help would be appreciated,
Thanks

i think ur senario is a parent-child relationship for foodgrp-foodsubgrp .
in that case , the mapping for foodsubgrp in foodgrp may be a collection .
so that you can add a sub group like foodgrp.add(foodsubgrp)
if so you can load the foodgrp using the id (session.load()) and simply use
foodgrp.getFoodSubGrps() to retrieve those subgroups. i think it will be a better way . i hope this will solve ur problem :)

THanks zzyborg. I used your suggestion and made the changes in my mapping file. I then didn't need to write a method to retrieve the foodSubGroups in my DAO at all. :-)