Hibernate version:
3.1

I've have a data model that has an Employee table which has several foreign keys to a lookup table containing the (string) values. I want to store in my Employee domain object these actual values, rather than the lookup ids.
I want to be able to edit and query the data, and need advice on the best solution for this, bearing in mind that I can have just the one lookup table. Also, the primary key of the lookup table is a sequence, and not the actual lookup value, which is another column.

For example, an Employee has an attribute of state (where they live) and the values for state live in the lookup table. I want to be able to call a method on Employee called setState("NSW") (I live in Australia) and have the integer primary key of the "NSW" entry in the lookup table stored in the employee table. I hope this makes sense.

Would a join element in the mapping of Employee, joining on the Lookup table, work for inserting, updating and querying? Or is there a better solution?

Thanks

join wouldn't be appropriate, because that correlates to the is-a relationship rather than the has-a that you're describing.

If the lookup tables rarely/never change, you can go with the IntValuedEnum solution (see http://www.hibernate.org/273.html, though that's for StringValuedEnumType.. you can infer the changes easily). Then your API would be calling setState(State.NSW). That's better than the type-unsafe "NSW", and still allows you to use the strings at a slightly higher level (by having your enum know about both the integer and string representations of each state).

If the lookup tables do change (take, for example, branch office name: you don't want the user to be able to type in any old string, but you want to be able to add company branches easily), then map the lookup table as an ordinary entity class.

Once again tenwit, you have given me a good practical solution
Thanks and regards
Alan
ps please look out for post about a related lookup issue soon