In Hibernate In Action:
"Hibernate doesn't require that accessor methods be declared public; it can easily use private accessors for property management."

How is this possible? Wouldn't Hibernate classes be outside of this class and therefore forbidden from accessing anything "private"?

Thanks,
NG

Uhm, thats basic Java reflection which makes it possible.

Sorrrrryyyyy! Don't much abut Java reflection, but did figure it was something like that.

Thanks for the answer though.

NG

It's possible, but it's not the recommended way to do it because setters and getters may do more than just assign or return a private variable (like validation and other business logic).