[hibernate-dev] overriding target through annotations

I'm looking at ANN-422 In HA, the target is usually inferred from the API (generics), and can be overridden in all associations through targetEntity ( @ManyToOne(targetEntity...) ) currently, you cannot override the target for a component, nor you can override it for a <map-key-many-to-many/> Two solutions 1. Define a @Target annotation that will work like the targetEntity for association and also handle components (@Embedded) Define a @MapKeyTarget to override the <map-key-many-to-many/> or <map-key/> (composite-element) target 2. Define a @Target annotation that will work like the targetEntity for association and also handle components (@Embedded) add a targetElement to @MapKey and @MapKeyManyToMany annotations I don't like much 2 because it mixes physical concerns and logical ones, but it reduce the amount of needed annotations Note that I hope the future spec will hopefully handle all cases nicely (ie add a targetElement in @Embedded), @MapKey should go to back the drawing board from a spec POV so we can think of something clean from the begining. Any preference, or alternative solution?