I am just wondering how different people would handle the problem below.

I have a Thread table/class that contains multiple Posts. Each Thread and Post have an author, which is associated with a User object. However, there is a Member object that extends the User, to allow for anonymous/unregistered posting.

Now, lets say I want to use the following logic:



What is the best way to handle this? I am mapping in Hibernate with the <joined-subclass> tag and it seems to be working fine otherwise. I can save members and users without problems.

Thank you in advance for your input!