Hello,

I'm just starting with hibernate, my only ORM experience was with Rails' ActiveRecord. While I'm enjoying the experience so far, I have a very specific doubt that I couldn't find the answer to, anywhere.

The use case is the following: We have three entitities classes, A, B and C. C, when created, may be of A or B type depending on user input. In other words, the C inheritance hierachy may change at runtime but only in the creation (new record) process.

Another more solid example: The C class would be the "Client" class. However, "Client" may be a "Company" or "Person", depending on what the user chooses in a combo box when creating this object.

Is it bad modelling? Someone told me that a simple attribute on the client class would suffice, however, I don't feel that this way I would be leveraging OOP.

Thanks,

Marcelo.

Hi, sorry for the bump, but I really need some enlightenment here!

Create a COMPANY or a PERSON object, depending on the user input. Pass it to hibernate. Assuming you created proper mapping files, and declared the inheritence strategy correctly, hibernate will store both types appropriately. You will have to provide more detail on how to actually access this data by your application, so I can try to assist in hibernate-side design.

thanks.