i dont know whether to use PropertyAccessor or UserType for the following problem :

i have a "code" property in my db. i want to insert formatted text in it.
different formats should come from an xml file.

for example i need to insert "CurrentDate / Financial Year / auto number"
into the code field.

it should look something like "2005-12-8/05/1"
and the next insert will be "2005-12-8/05/2"

another user may choose another format from xml. somting like:
"currentDate / INV / autonumber"

which will insert into db as : "2005-12-8/INV/1" and so on.

now i dont know whether i need to implement a propertyaccessor or i need to define a new usertype.

thax

or maybe i should change my question as follows :

is there a generator for property ?
i know it exists for id.
thax

usertype or db-trigger

It must be better to store plain date in database and to format it on client. So you do not need PropertyAccessor or UserType to solve this problem, it doe's not make sence.

If it's a legacy data model, there might not be a way around it.

If this is legacy model then formated text is just a string, is not ? But there are many good reasons not store formated text and it must be a very good reason to break 1 NF rule.

You're right in that it's just a string, but a good domain model shouldn't store formatted text, regardless of the persistence layer's representation.

I agree with you about not storing formatted text in the database. Unfortunately, there are a lot of data models out there that were designed by people who had no idea what they were doing.