It seems like a lot of other people had the same problem, but I wasn't able to find a conclusive resolution.

Is there a way to configure @ManyToOne annotation to cascade deletions from parent to children without having to use a @OneToMany on the parent side?

Thanks.

i don't think that this is possible. how should Hibernate know that you want to cascade deletions from parent to child if you don't tell it with an @OneToMany? an @OneToMany on the parent side tells Hibernate to replace the Set (or whatever kind of collection you are using) with a PersistentSet which tracks changes made to the collection and therefor being able to cascade those changes.

but i may be wrong. or maybe i didn't grasp your problem. :)

Well, Hibernate manages persistent objects. So it knows about their properties, annotations and relationships. I am sure Hibernate builds some sort of dependency graph between classes that it manages and can cascade DELETE from parent to child even if the child is annotated and parent is not. I am sure there are many ways to implement it.

It would be nice to hear some feedback from the Hibernate team.

Thanks.