Hibernate

Hibernate supports the three basic inheritance mapping strategies:

1. table per class hierarchy
2. table per subclass
3. table per concrete class

Hibernate supports a fourth, slightly different kind of polymorphism:

1. implicit polymorphism

It is possible to use different mapping strategies for different branches of the same inheritance hierarchy. You can then make use of implicit polymorphism to achieve polymorphism across the whole hierarchy. However, Hibernate does not support mixing , and mappings under the same root element. It is possible to mix together the table per hierarchy and table per subclass strategies under the the same element, by combining the and elements (see below for an example).

It is possible to define subclass, union-subclass, and joined-subclass mappings in separate mapping documents directly beneath hibernate-mapping. This allows you to extend a class hierarchy by adding a new mapping file. You must specify an extends attribute in the subclass mapping, naming a previously mapped superclass. Previously this feature made the ordering of the mapping documents important. Since Hibernate3, the ordering of mapping files is irrelevant when using the extends keyword. The ordering inside a single mapping file still needs to be defined as superclasses before subclasses.

<hibernate-mapping>
     <subclass name="DomesticCat" extends="Cat" discriminator-value="D">
          <property name="name" type="string"/>
     </subclass>
 </hibernate-mapping>

Suppose we have an interface Payment with the implementors CreditCardPayment, CashPayment, and ChequePayment. The table per hierarchy mapping would display in the following way:

<class name="Payment" table="PAYMENT">
    <id name="id" type="long" column="PAYMENT_ID">
        <generator class="native"/>
    </id>
    <discriminator column="PAYMENT_TYPE" type="string"/>
    <property name="amount" column="AMOUNT"/>
    ...
    <subclass name="CreditCardPayment" discriminator-value="CREDIT">
        <property name="creditCardType" column="CCTYPE"/>
        ...
    </subclass>
    <subclass name="CashPayment" discriminator-value="CASH">
        ...
    </subclass>
    <subclass name="ChequePayment" discriminator-value="CHEQUE">
        ...
    </subclass>
</class>

Exactly one table is required. There is a limitation of this mapping strategy: columns declared by the subclasses, such as CCTYPE, cannot have NOT NULL constraints.

A table per subclass mapping looks like this:

<class name="Payment" table="PAYMENT">
    <id name="id" type="long" column="PAYMENT_ID">
        <generator class="native"/>
    </id>
    <property name="amount" column="AMOUNT"/>
    ...
    <joined-subclass name="CreditCardPayment" table="CREDIT_PAYMENT">
        <key column="PAYMENT_ID"/>
        <property name="creditCardType" column="CCTYPE"/>
        ...
    </joined-subclass>
    <joined-subclass name="CashPayment" table="CASH_PAYMENT">
        <key column="PAYMENT_ID"/>
        ...
    </joined-subclass>
    <joined-subclass name="ChequePayment" table="CHEQUE_PAYMENT">
        <key column="PAYMENT_ID"/>
        ...
    </joined-subclass>
</class>

Four tables are required. The three subclass tables have primary key associations to the superclass table so the relational model is actually a one-to-one association.

Hibernate's implementation of table per subclass does not require a discriminator column. Other object/relational mappers use a different implementation of table per subclass that requires a type discriminator column in the superclass table. The approach taken by Hibernate is much more difficult to implement, but arguably more correct from a relational point of view. If you want to use a discriminator column with the table per subclass strategy, you can combine the use of and , as follows:

  <class name="Payment" table="PAYMENT">
    <id name="id" type="long" column="PAYMENT_ID">
        <generator class="native"/>
    </id>
    <discriminator column="PAYMENT_TYPE" type="string"/>
    <property name="amount" column="AMOUNT"/>
    ...
    <subclass name="CreditCardPayment" discriminator-value="CREDIT">
        <join table="CREDIT_PAYMENT">
            <key column="PAYMENT_ID"/>
            <property name="creditCardType" column="CCTYPE"/>
            ...
        </join>
    </subclass>
    <subclass name="CashPayment" discriminator-value="CASH">
        <join table="CASH_PAYMENT">
            <key column="PAYMENT_ID"/>
            ...
        </join>
    </subclass>
    <subclass name="ChequePayment" discriminator-value="CHEQUE">
        <join table="CHEQUE_PAYMENT" fetch="select">
            <key column="PAYMENT_ID"/>
            ...
        </join>
    </subclass>
</class>

The optional fetch="select" declaration tells Hibernate not to fetch the ChequePayment subclass data using an outer join when querying the superclass.

You can even mix the table per hierarchy and table per subclass strategies using the following approach:

<class name="Payment" table="PAYMENT">
    <id name="id" type="long" column="PAYMENT_ID">
        <generator class="native"/>
    </id>
    <discriminator column="PAYMENT_TYPE" type="string"/>
    <property name="amount" column="AMOUNT"/>
    ...
    <subclass name="CreditCardPayment" discriminator-value="CREDIT">
        <join table="CREDIT_PAYMENT">
            <property name="creditCardType" column="CCTYPE"/>
            ...
        </join>
    </subclass>
    <subclass name="CashPayment" discriminator-value="CASH">
        ...
    </subclass>
    <subclass name="ChequePayment" discriminator-value="CHEQUE">
        ...
    </subclass>
</class>

For any of these mapping strategies, a polymorphic association to the root Payment class is mapped using .

<many-to-one name="payment" column="PAYMENT_ID" class="Payment"/>

There are two ways we can map the table per concrete class strategy. First, you can use .

 <class name="Payment">
    <id name="id" type="long" column="PAYMENT_ID">
        <generator class="sequence"/>
    </id>
    <property name="amount" column="AMOUNT"/>
    ...
    <union-subclass name="CreditCardPayment" table="CREDIT_PAYMENT">
        <property name="creditCardType" column="CCTYPE"/>
        ...
    </union-subclass>
    <union-subclass name="CashPayment" table="CASH_PAYMENT">
        ...
    </union-subclass>
    <union-subclass name="ChequePayment" table="CHEQUE_PAYMENT">
        ...
    </union-subclass>
</class>

Three tables are involved for the subclasses. Each table defines columns for all properties of the class, including inherited properties.

The limitation of this approach is that if a property is mapped on the superclass, the column name must be the same on all subclass tables. The identity generator strategy is not allowed in union subclass inheritance. The primary key seed has to be shared across all unioned subclasses of a hierarchy.

If your superclass is abstract, map it with abstract="true". If it is not abstract, an additional table (it defaults to PAYMENT in the example above), is needed to hold instances of the superclass.

An alternative approach is to make use of implicit polymorphism:

 <class name="CreditCardPayment" table="CREDIT_PAYMENT">
    <id name="id" type="long" column="CREDIT_PAYMENT_ID">
        <generator class="native"/>
    </id>
    <property name="amount" column="CREDIT_AMOUNT"/>
    ...
</class>

<class name="CashPayment" table="CASH_PAYMENT">
    <id name="id" type="long" column="CASH_PAYMENT_ID">
        <generator class="native"/>
    </id>
    <property name="amount" column="CASH_AMOUNT"/>
    ...
</class>

<class name="ChequePayment" table="CHEQUE_PAYMENT">
    <id name="id" type="long" column="CHEQUE_PAYMENT_ID">
        <generator class="native"/>
    </id>
    <property name="amount" column="CHEQUE_AMOUNT"/>
    ...
</class>

Notice that the Payment interface is not mentioned explicitly. Also notice that properties of Payment are mapped in each of the subclasses. If you want to avoid duplication, consider using XML entities (for example, [ ] in the DOCTYPE declaration and &allproperties; in the mapping).The disadvantage of this approach is that Hibernate does not generate SQL UNIONs when performing polymorphic queries.For this mapping strategy, a polymorphic association to Payment is usually mapped using .

<any name="payment" meta-type="string" id-type="long">
    <meta-value value="CREDIT" class="CreditCardPayment"/>
    <meta-value value="CASH" class="CashPayment"/>
    <meta-value value="CHEQUE" class="ChequePayment"/>
    <column name="PAYMENT_CLASS"/>
    <column name="PAYMENT_ID"/>
</any>