A question regarding deletion of child collections which are indexed (i.e. a List) that have NOT NULL constraints on the foreign key in the child table.

We are aware that Hibernate suggests the usage of bi-directional association where there is a NOT NULL constraint in the child table, otherwise this will cause a constraint violation when trying to delete a child or children from the parent entity.

However, we have a requirement for an indexed collection, which do not support bi-directional ass., and would like to know how it is possible to delete these children if there is a FK with a NOT NULL constraint in the child table?

Is it possible? Should we be using a bag and managing the index ourselves?

Cheers,
Roll

Is this question so absurd that it doesn't require a response? We've scowered the forum and reference docs to no avail.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Regards,
Roll

Managing the index yourself is the only option if you need a bidirectional indexed collection - see the wiki, there is a page on that.