I have a one-to-many mappings and i am trying to initialize an attribute of my child object with some default value, but it appears that its not setting, any clue ?

Can you post some source code?

public class ClassA {
private String id1;
private String status;
private Set<ClassB> relationship = new HashSet<ClassB>();
public ClassA(){
this.status = 'E';
}
}

public class ClassB{
private String status;
private String id1;
public ClassB(){
this.status = 'A';
}
}

<hibernate-mapping package="com.xxx.xxx.test">
<class name="ClassA" table="table_class">
<id name="id1" column="id1" />
<property name="status" column="status"></property>
<set name="relationship" lazy="false" inverse="true">
<key column="id1"></key>
<one-to-many class="ClassB"/>
</set>
</class>
</hibernate-mapping>

the above are the 2 objects and the mapping class of parent object, let me know if you need any other code,

As long as the object is transient and not a detached or persisted object the initial value will work. Hibernate will use the setter and set the column value retrieved from DB.Hope this helps.
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can you send me some code samples on these,

If you are about to save an object which you have created from scratch on calling saveOrUpdate hibernate will save the status column with the default value that you have set.Try this first . hope this helps.
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i forgot to mention that i am trying to fetch the objects not saving/update

I am bit confused now. if you are trying to fetch then hibernate will use setters to set the properties. if you specify the peoperty as transient then you will not be able to save. If you provide me with a usecase I may be able to look into it further.Send me the actual code not pseudo code.