I have a simple many-to-many user-company relationship, but I also need to store an extra attribute at the companyUser level.

Can I put the extra attribute in the many-to-many companyUser mapping table and still get access to it?

I have tried modelling the relationship as two relationships - many-to-one, one-to-many, and then managing the mapping table manually. But doing that seems confusing with both table columns and mapped objects in the mapping table.

Any advice? I have only been using Hibernate a few weeks, so there may be an obvious solution I am missing.

Thanks

Martin

You could use composite-element to mapping these relantionship. It looks like what you do right now, but more concise with hibernate idiom.

Kind Regards,

Martin,

Section 7.3.2 in the reference document describes bi-directional mapping.
You could use an intermediate association class as the many-to-many element type.

Section 7.3.3 talks about ternary associations, modelled for example
as a Map (Company in your case, keyed on User) having the extra attributes
you're looking for as the mapped value.

HTH