Hi,

I am working on a Hibernate databased created from the basis of a uml class diagram, where uml classes are tables with their attributes as columns, and the uml associations become tables with foreign keys referencing 2 (class) tables. My problem occurs when i try to delete an entry in one of the (class) tables, which is referenced by another (association) table. I get a constraintviolationexception on the foreign key of the referencing table (which is no shock really).

My question is this: What are my options with regards to handling this? I have found the cascading delete function, which is alright as a worst case, but what i am really looking for is something like setting the columns in the referencing table entries to null if the referenced entry is deleted. This is as far as i can see possible in SQL, by manipulating the foreign key constraint to have ON DELETE SET NULL. I also see that this is not possible with Hibernate (pending ticket about this).

Is there currently a fairly simple way of doing this with Hibernate (could the foreign keys perhaps be manipulated "directly" through HQL queries?)? Are there any other options to cascading the delete?

Regards,

Tobb

Just set the constraint to "on delete set null" and be happy. The exception is thrown by you database, not by hibernate.

Well how do i set this through hibernate?