What is the best way to persist this? given tat I cant change the java-code?
(It 'belongs' to someone else,and they want it to work in a very specific way).

Thanks

Nick

To clarify,
There is no reason I cant change other Java code,
I was thinking of writing a custom type, or a custom collection, but I cant change domain object itself.

a side-note, I'm stuck with java 1.4, so nothing that requires annotations.

Cold someone please tell me, or point me to an example of a hibernate user type (or collection, whatever) that stores a map of string/sets?

I was thinking of writing a custom type, that would be sed as a property, so the ID is stored in the parent table, and a separate table, or tables, is/are used to store the String/Set mapping, and the contents of the set.

However, im not sure how to go about defining extra tables in the custom type java. (nor am I sure how to use a native ID in that context)

Thank you.