<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE hibernate-mapping PUBLIC
"-//Hibernate/Hibernate Mapping DTD 3.0//EN"
"http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-mapping-3.0.dtd">
<hibernate-mapping package="ru.props">
<class name="Property"
   table="property"
   node="property">
   <id name="name"
      type="string"
      node="@name"
      column="name">
   </id>
        <many-to-one name="parent" class="Property" column="parent" node="." embed-xml="true" />
</class>
</hibernate-mapping>

@Entity
public class Property implements Serializable {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
    private String name;
    private Property parent;

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    @Id
    @Column(name="name")
    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    @Override
    public int hashCode() {
        int hash = 0;
        hash += (name != null ? name.hashCode() : 0);
        return hash;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object object) {
        if (!(object instanceof Property)) {
            return false;
        }
        Property other = (Property) object;
        if ((this.name == null && other.name != null) || (this.name != null && !this.name.equals(other.name))) {
            return false;
        }
        return true;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return "ru.props.Property[name=" + name + ";parent=" + parent + "]";
    }

    @ManyToOne
    public Property getParent() {
        return parent;
    }

    public void setParent(Property parent) {
        this.parent = parent;
    }
   
}

    protected void processRequest(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
            throws ServletException, IOException {
        response.setContentType("text/html;charset=UTF-8");
        PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
        try {
            Configuration config = new Configuration();           
            config.configure(new File("D:\\My Documents\\NetBeansProjects\\WebApplication1\\web\\WEB-INF\\hibernate.cfg.xml"));
            config.addFile("D:\\My Documents\\NetBeansProjects\\WebApplication1\\web\\WEB-INF\\Property.hbm.xml");
            SessionFactory sessionFactory = config.buildSessionFactory();
            Session session = sessionFactory.openSession();
            org.hibernate.Transaction tx = session.beginTransaction();
            Session dom4jSession = session.getSession(EntityMode.DOM4J);
            SAXReader saxReader = new SAXReader();
            Document document = saxReader.read(new File("c:\\Hibernate\\property.xml"));                         
            // take second node
            Iterator iter = ((Element)document.getRootElement().elementIterator().next()).elementIterator();
            while (iter.hasNext()) {
                org.dom4j.tree.DefaultElement el =  (DefaultElement) iter.next();
                out.println(el.getParent()+" : "+el);
                dom4jSession.saveOrUpdate("ru.props.Property", el);
            }
            session.flush();
            tx.commit();
            session.close();

        } catch (DocumentException ex) {
            Logger.getLogger(NewServlet.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
        } finally {
            out.close();
        }
    }