Thinking about exactly how to write the equals function for hibernate based classes....

I read somewhere to think of it kind of like a weaker database primary key. So for example, if the object was a Person, then I might make equals() be true if both the firstName and lastName properties were equal. In a way I am saying that this is how I decide that the objects are referring to the same person...

Therefore, other properties of the Person object, like salary or age would not have to be equal, and still two Person objects would be considered equal in Hibernate's view.

Is this correct? Because it is very different (I believe) from what equals means in POJOs where the two objects would NOT be considered the same.

I hope I explained the question well. Picking the right Properties is crucial with Hibernate so it's important to grok these subtleties...

Pito

This is mostly correct, although I would include some better natural keys, like the firstName, lastName, birthDate and lastLogin. This all has _nothing_ to do with Hibernate. There is no Hibernate code in equals(). There is nothing Hibernate changes.

Wait, you would include Last Login?

Well you certainly would never include Last Login on a database primary key.

That was exactly my point. The difference between equals for Hibernate and equals in general.

Can anyone clarify further?

Hm, you are right, last login wasn't good.

there is the thread: http://forum.hibernate.org/viewtopic.php?t=928172 that discusses this.