I have three classes: RoutingChain, Status, and Permission. A RoutingChain object has a Permission and a set of Status objects. Which Statuses go into this set is determined by the Permission the RoutingChain has. So when I change the RoutingChain's Permission, its set of Status objects changes accordingly.

My problem is that when I change the Permission for a RoutingChain and generate a new set of Statuses, the old set of Statuses does not get deleted from the database. These old Statuses are successfully disassociated with the RoutingChain -- their ROUTING_CHAIN_ID column goes from the RoutingChain's ID to NULL -- but I want them to be completely deleted from the database altogether, instead of sitting there with no associated RoutingChain.

I know I can do this manually using a custom DAO method, but I'm sure there's some way to set up my hbm relationships such that when a Status's relationship with a RoutingChain is removed, that Status is deleted. Here's how I have my relationship now:

In RoutingChain's hbm:



In Status's hbm:



Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Erica

Does it work if instead of cascade="all" you use cascade="all-delete-orphan"?

Yes, that was it! I knew it had to be something simple, but I wasn't sure how to set up the cascade. That worked exactly the way I wanted. Thank you!

Although for the record, it was cascade="all,delete-update", with a comma between "all" and "delete-update", not a dash.