I'd like to implement a replacement for delete.
It does everything exactly as delete does,
but instead of actually deleting the record (and
all of its cascades), it
just puts a current timestamp in
a field (that is in all my tables) called
"deleted". All my persistent objects
derive from a single AbstractPersistentObject
and this AbstractPersistentObject
has a field that maps to "deleted"

I then use a session filter to keep the delete out of
my real data. But that way I can have an
administrator, or someone with special
privileges have the capability of perusing
the deleted items.

Is this just an inherently bad idea?

oh, and any pointers on where to start?

Hello,
Your problem is very similar to our one as well as entire approach and application architecture. I would ask you, have you found the solution? Maybe you have found another way or something else?

That's how we solve this as well. You could even write your own sql for the delete. This way you can even delete the instances with session.delete(). See chapter 17.4 of the reference manual

HTH
Ernst