I have an existing database that has two tables Company and Claim.

Company
company_id
....


Claim
claim_id
tier_company_id - foreign key to Company
....


There are no examples in the docs that show any mappings that have different column names (it is assumed Claim would have company_id instead of tier_company_id). This causes confusion on when and where you should put company_id or tier_company_id in the mapping. This is compounded by the documentation for key, index, and element whcih are either short and cryptic or practically non-existent.

Could someone please provide me with an example mapping for the above two tables that has a many-to-one inverse relationship between the two?

Er.... Doesn't it work?

For Claim:
<many-to-one name="company"
column="tier_company_id"
class="Company"
/>

If you need mapping from Company to Claim:

For Company:
<set name="claims"
table="CLAIM"
inverse="true"
lazy="true">

<key column="tier_company_id"/>
<one-to-many class="Claim"/>
</set>

That part of the association seemed to make the most sense to me (I guessed that that was how it should go). I'm having more trouble with the other part...

<set name="claims" inverse="true" lazy="true">
<key column="company_id"/>
<one-to-many class="Claim"/>
/set>


Should "key column" be company_id or tier_company_id?

Thanks that clears it up!