i have a schema that involves something like this:

Entity1 -> Mapping Table <- Static1

Entity1 is a "real data" table
Mapping1 is a mapping with a key to Entity1 and a key to Static1
Static1 is a "static lookup table" (aka metadata)

when i have hibernate generate the entities, Entity1 contains a Collection mapping that references the "static lookup table", which is fine for Fetches, but i when i persist a new Entity1, i do not want it to cascade the child objects because they already exist in the database (the static lookup table) and merely want it to persist the mapping entry ( Entity1-> id, Static1 -> id).

what i envision is, i create an Entity1, populate the collection (that represents the mapping) with dummy records with the Static1->id populated but leaving the other columns empty or null, and when i submit the Entity1 to persist(), it will render the mapping but not overwrite the Static1 entries with the dummy versions. is there a way to annotate this type of relationship (where the fetch is aware of the children, but the persist/merge only handle the key mapping)? OR do i have to write a custom persist/merge method(s) that decouple the persist/merge where i only need the linkages created and not cascade down to the children records?

== stanton

I think could help, you just have to disable the relationship from "cascading" persist and update operations.

basically, after reflecting the schema, i went in and reverse engineered the references to the "static entities" and replaced them with their primitive types (String, Integer, BigInteger, etc.) and @labeled them as @Column rather than @JoinColumn.

this way, the keys are still assignable, and hibernate wont perform any "unwanted magic" when data comes in.

the downside is i will have to "explicitly" fetch the rows from these static tables when needed, but since they are primarily for export/reporting, i can facade them and gather them in bulk for efficiency.

== stanton