We have 2 entities: Cat and Fish (species)
One cat eats many fishes, and one fish can be eaten by many cats.
They have a many to many relationship.

Interestingly, each cat have his/her own priority of favorite fishes, and index them by 1,2,...,n.

Now we want to operate on cats and fishes: create cat, set favorite fishes; create fish, set cats interest in him/her.

How can we model and mapping this? Especially the priority?


advTHANKSance

Does a cat to favour types of fish, or individual fishes? ie: Does Jerry like clown fish, or does he just have a particular hardon for Nemo?

Cats and fishes are all species here, not individual ones.

i believe this is more of an issue with the design of the table than with hibernate.

you can try using the many-to-many relationship with an intermediate table. refer to the hibernate docs for example.

hope this solves your problem.

rate if it does

thanks cobra82.

For many to many relationship, it requires an intermediate table, the question now is whether I need a intermediate class as well, which has the index as its property? If not, how can I map the Cat and Fish classes.

any response is welcome

mejooe, add this one to your favourites http://www.hibernate.org/hib_docs/v3/re ... orial.html

... down the bottom (1.3.5. Bi-directional associations) it explains how to map many-to-many's

Keith.