Any help is appreciated. I'm trying to figure out why my collection will only perform inserts in the database. If a modify an existing child object, my update(subscription) call inserts another new record. Changing my data access layer call to merge() will remove a record when it previously exists but throws an Exception when trying to insert a new one.

I thought that performing an update() would handle inserts, updates and deletes on the collection. Can I get some help on what I'm missing?

Hibernate version:3.2.5
Database: Oracle 9
Spring 2.5.2

<!-- this is the parent collection mapping-->
<set name="companies"
cascade="all,delete-orphan"
lazy="false"
table="SUBSCRIPTIONS_COMPANIES"
inverse="true">
<key column="subscription_id" />
<one-to-many entity-name="SubscriptionCompany" />
</set>

<!-- this is the child (many side of relationship)-->
<class SubscriptionCompany"
table="SUBSCRIPTIONS_COMPANIES"
lazy="false"
entity-name="SubscriptionCompany">

<composite-id >
<key-many-to-one name="parent"
class="Subscription"
column="subscription_id"/>

<key-property name="companyIdType"
column="company_id_type"
type="string" length="1" />

<key-property name="companyId"
column="company_id"
type="string" length="13" />
</composite-id>

</class>



My data access implementation class extends HibernateDaoSupport. This is the data access call being made with a modified Subscription instance from the UI.

getHibernateTemplate().update(subscription);


Exception from merge():
org.springframework.dao.DataIntegrityViolationException: could not insert: [SubscriptionCompany]; nested exception is org.hibernate.exception.ConstraintViolationException: could not insert: [SubscriptionCompany]
at org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.SessionFactoryUtils.convertHibernateAccessException(SessionFactoryUtils.java:624)
at org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.SpringSessionSynchronization.beforeCommit(SpringSessionSynchronization.java:143)
at org.springframework.transaction.support.TransactionSynchronizationUtils.triggerBeforeCommit(TransactionSynchronizationUtils.java:48)
at org.springframework.transaction.support.AbstractPlatformTransactionManager.triggerBeforeCommit(AbstractPlatformTransactionManager.java:882)
at org.springframework.transaction.support.AbstractPlatformTransactionManager.processCommit(AbstractPlatformTransactionManager.java:692)
at org.springframework.transaction.support.AbstractPlatformTransactionManager.commit(AbstractPlatformTransactionManager.java:678)
at org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionAspectSupport.commitTransactionAfterReturning(TransactionAspectSupport.java:321)
at org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionInterceptor.invoke(TransactionInterceptor.java:116)
at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed(ReflectiveMethodInvocation.java:171)
at org.springframework.aop.interceptor.ExposeInvocationInterceptor.invoke(ExposeInvocationInterceptor.java:90)
at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed(ReflectiveMethodInvocation.java:171)
at org.springframework.aop.framework.JdkDynamicAopProxy.invoke(JdkDynamicAopProxy.java:204)