I noticed that Middlegen puts the "length" attribute into the XDoclet mappings of properties of type Date (or its java.sql.* subclasses.) I have several questions related to that:

1. Is there any meaning to "length" attribute when used in Date-typed properties?

2. What exactly does Hibernate do with them?

3. If those length attributes are used to tell Hibernate whether this Date property should hold just the date vs. just the time vs. both, isn't it better to specify type="date"/type="time"/type="datetime" instead? Or is there any value in using both type and length attributes together in this context?

Thanks in advance.

Eugene

P.S. BTW, Middlegen Hibernate plugin generates type="java.sql.Timestamp", type="java.sql.Date", etc. in the .hbm.xml mappings, but hbm2java then ignores it and creates java.lang.Date typed properties. Which one is right, i.e. which one is preferable to use with Hibernate? (I guess it's Q#4. :)

you should not have javax.sql types in your pojos since its an impl detail. java.util.Date is the proper representation for both timestamps and date in java (unfortunately)

Thanks Max, that helps. Now, what about the mappings (specifically, the length and type attribute?)

Eugene

1/2 depends on the underlying dialect (but for timestamp i would guess everyone has a "pure" timestamp/date that does not need a length)

Ignore the length attribute as in the date context it has no meaning. The Meta data reports a length value so Middlegen generates it. I never bothered with checking the context as it does not matter. The type generated depends on which type mapper you have configured (hence you can also supply your own as an alternate to the existing ones) - remember Middlegen is generic at the core and that type is appropriate for other tools. In anycase, set it up the way you want it to work.

Thanks David. Very helpful, as usual.

Eugene