Hi, I've been trying to map a table that has a field that I want to use both as discriminator and as a many-to-one relation.
I tried all kind of combinations but hibernate doesn't seem to like it.
The Table "Valor" is mapped using the table-per-class-hierarchy mapping strategy, and I also have another table "Tipo_Valor" (mapped to class "TipoValor") that enumerates the different types of "Valor" that exist. In "Valor" there's a field called "tipo_valor" that is the foreign key to the table "Tipo_Valor".
Is there any reason why I can't use the field "tipo_valor" as a many-to-one relation to "TipoValor" and as a discriminator for subclasses of "Valor" as well??
Here is my mapping:

<hibernate-mapping>
<class
name="com.zetti.ftweb.valores.modelo.Valor"
table="VALOR"
>

<id
name="id"
column="id"
type="java.lang.Long"
>
<generator class="sequence">
</generator>
</id>

<discriminator
column="tipoValor"
/>

<many-to-one
name="tipoValor"
class="com.zetti.ftweb.valores.modelo.TipoValor"
cascade="none"
outer-join="auto"
column="tipo_valor"
/>

<property
name="codificacion"
type="java.lang.String"
column="codificacion"
/>

<subclass
name="com.zetti.ftweb.valores.modelo.Billete"
discriminator-value="3"
>
....
</subclass>

<subclass
name="com.zetti.ftweb.valores.modelo.NotaCredito"
discriminator-value="8"
>
....
</subclass>
....
</class>

</hibernate-mapping>

hi carinatrujillo,

did you solve this problem? is it easiest just to leave out the MANY-TO-ONE mapping for the descriminator column?

You can't because in Java you can't change the instance class by changing a many-to-one assoc elsewhere.
What you can do is mapping the many-to-one with insert=false update=false