Hi,

I am new to Hibernate and I am reading the Hibernate in Action book.
I am unable to understand Associations.
We make an association bidirectional by setting inverse=true in the mapping file.
The book example says there is a bidirectional relationship between Item and Bid.
But in the table relationship diagram there is a primary key BID_ID in the BID table and a foreign key ITEM_ID which shows the association between Bid and item.
The other association (ie the other way round ) between Item and BId, there is no foreign key in ITEM table.
So just saying inverse=true, would that make it a bidirectional association .
Isn't there a need a foreign key in the ITem table ?

If anyone could please explain me this.

Thanks,
Gayatri

No, thats one of the differences between the two models, discussed in chapter 1. If you don't understand the explanations in the book you might want to try some of the tutorials linked on www.hibernate.org.