Hi,

I am evaluating different JPA implementations and wonder about "delete-orphan" feature. Seems that all major pre-JPA ORM frameworks (hibernate, kodo, toplink, jdo) recognized need for such a feature.

Despite existing experience, the feature is missing in JPA spec, effectivelly breaking Rich Domain Model idea (any method possibly deleting an object needs an EntityManager instance).

This is in sharp conflict with EntityManager planned use (EntityManager is meant for use out of managed environment as well).
Please, can someone explain me what arguments had JPA commitee?
Exist any links which could help me understand situation in this area?

thanks martin

delete-orphan is a bad hack that does not fit into the entity lifecycle model. An entity instance supports shared references, just because a single reference (pointer) to it is removed, doesn't mean the persistence service can go ahead and remove the instance.

Note that I'm not saying it's a useless hack.

Thanks, Christian, despite I can not say You helped me :-D.
Please, what nice hack i am supposed to use instead of the bad one, in order to comply with entity lifecycle model?
I hope there is one.

I insist "delete-orphan" is "mus-have" feature. If JPA entity lifecycle does not support it, then JPA is IMHO wrong. Without this feature it is not possible:
a) modify a detached object (if modification results in some deletions)
b) use Rich Domain Object (unless all my business methods/objects are infected with EntityManager)
(pls correct me if i'm wrong)

If i put it short JPA commitee is wrong as entity lifecycle does not calculate with child entity deletion?