I used the Eclipse Middlegen plugin to generate my Java files from my database, as a first development step.

In looking through the hbm files, I notice that Middlegen put cascade="all" in all the inverse collections, which I assume means I can save either side of a collection, and have it persist correctly.

It would seem that all objects in those collections will always try to save, but that seems like a lot of work. Is this a good thing, or do I need to go back and be more judicious?

I would assume that you would need to be “more judicious” in the use of Cascade = “All”. Have you seen link: http://hibernate.org/98.html?cmd=prntdoc

Excerpt:

I did see that, but the Ant task seems to go the other way: replacing all "none" with "all." That's the opposite of what I'm seeing. I wasn't sure if the docs were out of date, or if I misread the regexp.

Depends on what version of Middlegen your using. In later versions, there is an Ant option to set the type of cacade option you want for your collections. I am not sure what MiddlegenIDE is doing though - I assume it setting that property as 'all' cascade is likely to be more common than not.