I have two persistent classes Employee and EmployeeType with the two related as

EmployeeType = Employee.getEmployeeType() with emp_type_id as the foriegn key.

Currently I do the following

Employee emp = new Employee() ;
emp.setName ( "xyz") ;

EmployeeType empType = session.get( ......)
emp.setEmployeeType( empType)

session.save( emp);

Can I have the employeeTypeId as an attribute as well as a many to one association defined for the Employee class.

This way I can set the employeeTypeId directly.

Can I do this

Employee emp = new Employee() ;
emp.setName ( "xyz") ;
emp.setEmployeeTypeId( 123);
session.save( emp);

Please advise

Not with Hibernate 2.x and on. If employee type is a lazy loaded class then you can do a session.load() as this will not hit the database because a proxy will be created. Otherwise, if no cascading is on then you can create the domain class (new EmployeeType) set its id then assign the new object to the Employee.

I think you can do it using <many-to-one insert="false" udapte="false"/>
but the many to one element will be read only from a DB pespective and you'll have to update manyToOneId by yourself