I've been wrestling with an issue for a while, and am not sure what the best option is.

I've got a set of C# classes Aclass and Bclass. and SQL Server tables Atable and Btable.

Aclass
--------
int ID
String AField1
ISet<Bclass> ASet1
...other fields...

Bclass
-------
int ID
String BField1
ISet<Aclass> BSet1
...other fields...

ATable
-------
int ID
varchar Acolumn1
...other fields...

BTable
-------
int ID
varchar Bcolumn1
...other fields...

The IDs are the primary keys.
The Sets contain links to the classes (A and B) that have the same value for AField1 and BField1. So, for example, if an instance of Aclass and Bclass had the same value in their Field1, that instance of Aclass would be referenced in BSet1, and vice versa.


So it's a many-to-many relationship, but there's no join table, and since neither AField1 nor BField1 are unique keys in their table, there's no foreign key reference.

Also, unfortunately, simply modifying the database schema is not possible.

Is there some way to mimic a join table, or a workaround to relate ATable and BTable via their Column1s without modifying the database?

Maybe something like that will work or does that need to have a foreign key between the two tables?

I'm not sure if that will work, as I'm not at a work computer right now, but my understanding was that represented the join table.. The table for the class the hbm is in, isn't really needed, as it's already in there in

Anyways. I'll try it on Monday, and let you know how it goes.

Thanks :)

If that does not work, you can try and use a one-to-many on both ends.

Okay, apparently I'm reassigned. Won't be able to test it, unfortunately. Looks like in <set>, "table=" is optional. It probably defaults to ATable in this case, so I'm guessing that that's the trick. I'm going to close this :)

Thanks for the help, guys.