I'm trying to map to an existing datamodel for an older product we are migrating to Java.

I have tried ever way to map this collection over the last few days with no success.



Person and Business each have a collection of phone nums hanging off of them however there is no junction table. One part of a composite key (the Phone_Nums_Id) from the phone nums is referenced in the person and business tables.

To further complicate things, in the Person and Business tables, Phone_Nums_Id isn't technically a FK as in the relationship is not enforced in the test database I'm using.

I would like to construct Person and Business to have a collection of Phone_Nums on them however the mapping is eluding me. Using composite elements I am able to have hibernate properly build the query however it passes in the wrong search Criteria. For example for Person it passes in the Person_Id value instead of the Phone_Nums_Id on the record thus returning no or incorrect results.

Is what I'm attempting to do even possible or should I start the ball rolling on getting this more normalized, a task I'm not sure can be done?

For reference, this is the mapping from Person that built the correct query but ended up passing in the wrong parameter:

Hibernate collections must use a PK as the target of a <key>. However, you never need to use collections. Just map two <many-to-one property-ref> associations and use queries instead of collections.

Thanks. Response greatly appreciated.