Regarding Hibernate 3.x

Here is my hibernate mapping:

...
<class
name="hibernate.Employee"
table="Employee"
>
...

public class RealEmployee extends hibernate.Employee


Can I persist RealEmployee without specifying an explicit mapping?

Thanks,

I would say no.

Don't forget that databases model 'has-a' relationships, not 'is-a', so the database wont understand that RealEmployee extends Employee.

Without the mapping file how would Hibernate know which properties of RealEmployee to persist?

Chapter 3.6 of Hibernate in action gives a very good overview of inheritance. Also chapter 10 of the docs should help.

I've just tried this, and you can persist a RealEmployee using only an Employee mapping file.

But obviously only the properties inherited from Employee are persisted.

I was about to tried myself. Thanks for trying. You saved me the time :)

Yeah, RealEmployee data members are all transient, so I won't need to persist them.

It makes sense it should work. I have not yet looked at Hibernate code but it must traversing the inheritance hierarchy and map the class at each level, if one was available.