Hi,
What is the best way to model this: Assume I have two objects: Agency and Publisher, and both have a 1-to-n relationship to Employee. This is a true 1-to-n relationship, as each Employee can only work for one Agency or one Publisher. Let's assume further that I cannot introduce a supertype (e.g. Employer) which holds the 1-to-n relationship.
My preferrd solution is to have a foreign key in Emplyee that can either link to a primary key of Agency or Publisher (all my primary keys are 64-bit IDs that are unqiue across the database). However, now I won't be able to map a bi-directional association, without indicating in Employee whether this is an "Agency" or "Publisher" relationship (ala <ANY>).
My other option is to use two tables, AgencyEmployee and PublisherEmployee, which can then be linked as traditional 1-to-n bidirectional associations.

What do you guys consider best practice in this situation?

Cheers,

Jen

Create a Superclass for Agency and Publisher (for example Company) and Link Employee to Company

This is common hibernate, please walk trough a tutorial :)

Thanks, that's what I would ideally do, but as I said in my post, I can't introduce a superclass (The above is just a simllified example, my actual object hierarchy is much more involved -- in a nutshell, I would need multiple inheritance to pull it off).
What do you think is my next-best option?

Thanks!

Jen