I'm new to hibernate and hopefully this is a dumb question, when I reverse engineer from the mySQL database the hibernate mapping files that get created have "inverse" set to true.

Although this might be useful, I'm not sure whether I need the bi-directional support and would like to turn this off by default.

Why does it decide to use inverse=true and can I override it?

Example

Membership table (PK is memberID)
LibraryBook table (PK is bookID, FK to membership.memberID)
History table (FK to membership.memberID and libraryBook.bookID)

Another dumb Q, in mySQL we have tried to use the DB admin software to add foreign keys, it seems to always add an index and we can't remove it. Is this because you must have an index for the foreign key? I thought the index's were always optional?

Hibernate version:3

Mapping documents:Generated from database schema

Name and version of the database you are using: Ver 14.12 Distrib 5.0.16, for Win32 (ia32)

not sure how to turn it off by default, but inverse="true" is a good thing. It's generally helpful if your child objects point towards their parent in the POJOs. In certain cases it can cut down on many db calls as well as assist in navigation.