I was wondering what advantage there is for placing attributes like 'length="1"' in the hbm.xml files. This is an attribute for the property tag. From what I can tell, it's not needed. I haven't used them on previous projects, but they are being used on the current one, hence it has given rise to a curiousity.

thanks,
Mike

you can export your db schema from the hbm xml files

I just found that's where you would use those kinds of attributes. So would you use those attributes for situations where you are not creating the database from the hbm files? I would assume not, but I'd like to get other peoples opinions.


thanks,
Mike

It isn't needed. Hibernate does not use the length attribute to perform any validation on the data. It seems to me to be extraneous, but middlegen puts it there so I don't delete it :) You can get the meta data out of the Configuration class if you want to use the length information in your code to do whatever.

I do use it in a haxxored up version of hibernate tools however to help me add some code to my Pojos when I use the hbm2java tasks to make my Pojos from the hbm files.

Other property attributes are used however. for example, not-null="true" attribute does perform validation and hibernate throws an error if you violate it.