Hi

We use hibernate2, java, spring, tomcat and oracle10g.

I want to remove the foreign key constraints on one table so that the table no more has many-to-one relation with its parent table.

When I do this, I update the hibernate mappings accordingly by removing the one-to-many / many-to-one mappings between the two tables.

Will this be sufficient or should I remove the relation between the two corresponding Java objects (of the two tables) also? Basically I am trying to enforce the relation between the two objects in the hibernate layer even though there is no relation between their tables? Is it possible?

Thanks in advance

Sri

If you want to keep the relationship but drop the foreign key (for performance reasons), then you should probably keep the relationships in the mappings. Hibernate doesn't care about foreign keys, it will carry on like it always has if you drop them. If you drop the relationship in the mapping file, then all the power of hibernate goes with it.

Note that you're opening yourself to a certain level of brittelness if you drop the DB relationships. Theoretically, someone could add now delete a row manually, leaving orphaned objects that your app will never be able to find (if it only ever finds child objects by navigating from their parents).

Tenwit

Thank you for your prompt response.

Sri