Hi,

Am I right by saying that Hibernate is not the correct tool if you want to map XML <-> Java, as opposed to Castor with its Marshall/ Unmarshall class ?

Otherwise, how can I map an XML file into a Java object ?

Please advice.

Thanks,
Benoit.

Hibernate has only marginal marshall/unmarshall support for database im/export in the latest version. It is not the right tool for generic XML databinding.

I use an XSD to generate my Java classes via JAXB. The only thing you would need to remember is that an XSD represents XML, which maps nicely to OO, but to get it to a state that Hibernate can work nicely with, you should add in the Relational elements if you are mapping to a RDMS, and of course, because of this, you need to make sure you do the child.setParent()'s yourself when you unMarshall, and inversely, do child.setParent(null) when you want to Marshall, otherwise you'll get stack overflow exceptions due to circular references.

Anyway, as Christian said, Hibernate is more to do with the datalayer.

-G