Hibernate version: 2.16

Mapping documents: not applicable

Code between sessionFactory.openSession() and session.close(): not applicable

Full stack trace of any exception that occurs: not applicable

Name and version of the database you are using: MySQL 4.0.21 for Windows

The generated SQL (show_sql=true): not applicable

Debug level Hibernate log excerpt: not applicable

Am I right in thinking it's not a great idea to perform initialisation in default no-arg constructors in for Hibernate-persisted POJOs? After all, any initialisation of persisted fields will usually be thrown away when Hibernate loads the current values.

What approaches do other people use? A pattern I'm considering is some kind of initialise() method for all such POJOs.

Jon