Hi all
I'm using hibernate to access a database which I cannot modify (the structure) this database has one to many relationships, but no constraints for foreign keys .

Can I define a one-to-many relationship in such conditions?

Thanks in advance!

One of the Key benefits of Hibernate is that you don't need to define the joins as it uses the foreign keys to build it for you. You can use HQL (with the where join) to get the information but that would be the extent of it. Unless the data or application is totally broken I wonder why you cannot have the foreign keys.

I really don't know what are the benefits, may be preformance. The database I'm wokring with is the bugzilla database (jagzilla.sf.net for more info).
I explored and searched the web for docs about this and couldn't find any.

At this moment I'm about to drop the idea of using relations for this reason, but beeing able to use them would be great, if it can be done

I don't really understand your problem at all. Hibernate does not require foreign key constraints to function.

Foreign keys are useful for mapping generators. Not Hibernate core.

Guys, foreign key constraints ensure referential integrity in the database. All other uses come second. A database with associated entities and no foreign key constraints is not worth anything. I'd "refactor" the database first.

It was the hibernate does not require foreign keys to work what I needed to know. sorry if this was on the docs and I didn't find it.
Thank you all.