I am using hibernate annotations and it's validator, which is really usefull.

On one property I have the following annotations:
@NotNull @length(min = 1)

When I set this property to null I get:
org.hibernate.PropertyValueException: not-null property references a null or transient value

When I set this property to "" I get a:
org.hibernate.validator.InvalidStateException: validation failed for:


From a hibernate user's perspective, both are validation exceptions, only because not null of table schema is checked before the validations, the not null doesn't give a InvalidStateException too.
But it should, shouldn't it?

it's actually due to the hibernate core lifecycle and the way Hibernate Validator integrates in it. I need to think about it hard, but this is not easy to workaround

Is there a JIRA issue for this I can track or shall I make one?

there is one already in the validator component

I just encountered a different problem, which leads me to believe that validation should occur a lot sooner to solve this problem too:

class Person {
private Address address; // composition: cascade all + eager

@NotNull private PersonType persontype;
...
}


When I create a new Person (with a new Address) and save my Person with a null persontype I get and exception (as expected), but my address object has changed: now my address has the non-null id 5. So when my user fills in the personType, the Person cannot be safed because the adress 5 wasn't safed in the database, but the id 5 leads hibernate to believe that it already exists in the database.

PS: I coudn't find the issue you where talking about in JIRA for Hibernate Annotations, component validator with any resolution

ANN-111 is a different issue, right?

FYI

http://opensource.atlassian.com/project ... se/ANN-396 is the correct issue