RI have read section 6.1.2 on using mappting types, and create user types. The example is about combining 2 columns into one type. Are there any examples for splitting a column into multiple properties? In our database, a very legacy system, the original designers "overloaded" char columns. Somewhat difficult to explain this whorked up database. But, the short ot it, we need to split up these char columns into smaller pieces. Which is totally possible using Informix sql, but we sure would like to hide that from the business level developer.

Uhm, thats just the same as using several columns, with a different routine in nullSafeGet() and nullSafeSet().

Ok, I understand that.

The issue is that we would have to retrieve the entire column from the database, then in the nullSafeGet() we would split up the column.

Say we have a column in a table(t1) and it has a char column called 'other' that has a zise of 256. We want to do a select a segment of the column. In Informix SQL, for example, we can do the following:

select t1.other[200,250] info from tl where t.other[200,250]= "some info"

In this case the "splitting' of the column information is done at the database level. In the case of the examples for Hibernate Custom Types it is done at the Java level. This would be ok, but how do we query in there "where" statement on the partial column as the query above illustrates? I may be missing something obvious here.

It seems to me, that for retrieving information using Hibernate, as we want, is a viable solution only if the partial column is not part of the Where clause.

Thanks for the help so far.

This is a good question for the normal Hibernate User forum, I only have time for book and CaveatEmptor questions here.