[hibernate-dev] dynamic entities

Hi hibernate-dev, I have an interest in modifying hibernate core to support an alternative persistence model common in some domains like the medical domain. how do I go about it? here is a small description of the problem and a solution: problem: Objects map one to one to tables as specified at design time which is normally what most applications require. Object relational mapping runtimes like hibernate core cater well for this common case. However, some applications require a catalog of entities and their attributes. Other applications require a more dynamic mapping to a set of few fixed tables regardless of the number of domain objects. solution: Persist entities to an EAVCR meta-model which stores values of attributes in a generic Data table. The values can only be stored as a generic type (String) but types can be tightened at runtime. This also means that all dynamic entities, heterogeneous as they maybe, are stored in one table and cataloged by a few more. Using such model complicates the native SQL to access the data so it maybe necessary to map the SQL to hide such complexity. Fortunately, domains using this model require entity centric queries (load all data for a patient) which is more coarse grained. does this sound interesting to anyone on this list? Thanks. --Iyad --------------------------------- Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell? Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos.