HI -

I am new to hibernate and I spent hours but not able to find a proper solution. I am hoping I will get some hints from experts.

I am loading the parent from XML file and the child is loaded with empty set. Before persisting the parent I check if the parent already exists using the PARENT_ID and in my case it find that the parent exists and there is one existing child record so when I do a em.merge() I am expecting that hibernate should delete the existing child records as the set is empty in the current parent but instead it is doing an update query which is throwing a NOT NULL exception.

Update CHILD_TABLE set PARENT_ID=null where PARENT_ID=?

Following is my code snippet of parent / child


@Entity
@Name("parent")
@Scope(ScopeType.SESSION)
@Table(name="Parent_Table")
public class Parent implements Serializable {

@GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.SEQUENCE, generator="tpGen")
@SequenceGenerator(name="tpGen", sequenceName="TP_SEQ")
@NotNull
@Column(name="SEQ_ID")
@Id
public Integer getId() {
return id;
}

public void setId(Integer id) {
this.id = id;
}

@Column(name="PARENT_ID")
public String getParentId() {
return parentId;
}

public void setParentId(String parentId) {
this.parentId = parentId;
}


@OneToMany(targetEntity=Child.class, fetch=FetchType.EAGER, cascade=CascadeType.ALL)
@JoinColumn(name="PARENT_ID", referencedColumnName="PARENT_ID")
@NotFound(action=NotFoundAction.IGNORE)
@Cascade({org.hibernate.annotations.CascadeType.PERSIST, org.hibernate.annotations.CascadeType.DELETE_ORPHAN})
public Set<Child> getChildSet() {
return childSet;
}



}

---------------------------------------------------------

Child Class
-----------


@Entity
@Name("Child")
@Scope(ScopeType.SESSION)
@Table(name="Child_Table")
public class FileNamingTemplateMembership implements Serializable {



private transient String parentId;
private String templateName;

private transient String updateUserId;
private transient Date updateDate;


@Id @NotNull
@Length(max=80)
@Column(name="PARENT_ID")
public String getParentId() {
return parentId;
}

public void setParentId(String parentId) {
this.parentId = parentId;
}

@Length(max=40) @NotNull
@Column(name="CHILD_NAME")
public String getChildName() {
return childName;
}

public void setChildName(String childName) {
this.childName = childName;
}

@Length(max=80)
@Column(name="UPDT_USER_ID")
public String getUpdateUserId() {
return updateUserId;
}

public void setUpdateUserId(String updateUserId) {
this.updateUserId = updateUserId;
}

@Column(name="UPDT_DT")
public Date getUpdateDate() {
return updateDate;
}

public void setUpdateDate(Date updateDate) {
this.updateDate = updateDate;
}

}