I need a suggestion about an UserType problem.

I have a Quantity class with two fields: quantity(BigDecimal) and unitofmeasure (Unit, a custom class).

Using an UserType I can get the Unit id (i.e. kg,mm,meter, etc) as a String and write and read it into the database. But when I read it I should rebuild the real Unit entity and set the property of the Quantity class, as if it was a many-to-one relationship. And I expect that it is done inside the UserType implementation, as the Quantity object returned should be immediatly usable by the client code.

Unfortunatly I did non find any example about how I can read another table inside an UserType nullSafeGet() method.

Anybody can help me?
Thanks
Marco Pancotti
Italy

If the contents of the Unit table are basically static, you can implement this as a string-valued enum (http://www.hibernate.org/273.html). Otherwise, it's a many-to-one association.