I have a customer class which contains a Set of addresses. Adding an address to the customer and saving the customer works fine, as does modifying an address. However, removing an address from the customer and saving the customer does NOT delete the customer from the database. The log shows that the address has been removed successfully from the customer object at the point the customer is saved (with saveOrUpdateCopy). But the address remains in the database. What have I got wrong here?

Here's the relevant section from the Customer mapping:

<set
name="addresses"
lazy="true"
inverse="true"
cascade="all"
sort="unsorted"
>

<key column="customer_id">
</key>

<one-to-many
class="myproject.om.Address"
/>

</set>

This is from the Address mapping:

<many-to-one
name="customer"
class="myproject.om.Customer"
cascade="none"
outer-join="auto"
update="true"
insert="true"
access="property"
column="customer_id"
/>

all-delete-orphan?

hi anthony.
maybe my reply is out of place, but isn' t the "all" cascade here the right choice?
i mean, isn' t the "all-delete-orphans" appropriate for the following situation (assuming the mapping presented here) :

if a customer is delete, then remove all the addresses populating the set , because they are weak entities and they have no father left.

while the "delete " cascade behavior is intended for:

if an address populating the set of a customer is deleted, then remove it from the db when the customer is persisted.

Am I getting it right?

Yes, this did the job. Thanks a lot!

It solved my problem, but I too am puzzled.

J2R do you mind posting the piece of code where you open the session and perform the delete? Thanks.

cascade= all implies cascade=delete
that means, if you delete the parent, the children are deleted, but if a child is 'removed' from the collection, it is not deleted.

delete-orphan means "please delete children when they are orphan", so if you remove a child from a collection, it is deleted.
This is what you need in your case.

thanks. that was wellcome.