Is there a way to force deletes to happen before updates when Hibernates executes its queries?

I remove a detail row from a collection in a standard master-detail relationship and then renumber the index column (a list) to patch up the hole but when I flush the parent the updates are done before the delete and I hit a unique-check violation in the DB.

Can this be done by configuration or do I have to delete the detail row explicitly?

I don't know if I understood well but if you have, for example:

STUDENT ----> READBOOKS where STUDENT is your master and READBOOKS is your "detail" you can simply remove the ReadBook persister from your Set and then update the parent.

Why you need to update your index? To trace the number of books read by the student?

I suppose the relationship between the two entities is one to many

hope that helps

Because it is a list and there will be a null row next time it is loaded if there is a gap in the index numbering.

Do you really need a list? Or you can use Set? If you need ordering feature you can use a SortedSet.
Post some code if you can.

LUCA

For all practical purposes, yes. I do removal of rows from the details while they are only in the presentation layer so I have to access them before they have any meaningful identity.

It would be hard to do(?) if I can't access them in an List-like indexed way like order.getOrderRows().remove(selIndex)

if you have something like:

ORDER ---> DETAILS I think you could do like that:

imagine you have in the presentation layer lines of DETAILS that you can check/uncheck with checkboxes that have, as values, the DETAILID.

In your controller (if using MVC/MODEL2) you can:

1) take all the IDS selected
2) build a detailPersistersSet with the selected IDS
3) do something like

Set orderDetailsSet = order.getOrderDeatilsSet();
orderDetailSet.removeAll(detailPersistersSet);

4) update the order object

in that way you could use Set for your details obtaining what you want (if I understood well)

hope taht helps