For an array tag we need to specify the list-index nested-tag (thats mandatory)
but my app doesnt need to maintain any particular sequence order.
The business tier has a class which has an array[] of a custom type.
But the database doesnt has any column for specifying the index.
So to create a mapping can I just create a column (dummy) and give its name in column attribute of list-index nested-tag and let the value inside
it be null (as the sequence doesnt matter to me).
Is that kind of thing possible ?







In the above example, if suppose i dont put any values in 'speaker_index' column (i.e. null values) what will be the effect ?

If the order does not matter, then you are not mapping an array - it's a bag. The fact that it's an array in POJO shouldn't matter - simply convert a Collection to an array on the way in using the toArray method, and convert back to a collection on the way out, like this:

I hope this helps.

Yah, thats true. But the thing is that I am porting an existing Business app onto hibernate. So I cannot change existing interface in those class, I can only do whatever in xml and databases. So the API still remains like this :





To make the arrays in business tier classes to be populated by hibernate I can use only <array> tag ... but that requires a index column...So i am adding a new index column with null values as sequence doesnt matter to me.

PS - I will also use subselect inside <array> tag to conditionally populate elements in my array. (Just in case this info might be useful to you.)