[hibernate-dev] Processing mapping information followup

Wanted to start a follow up discussion to the conversation we had at the IRC meeting on 6/13 with regards to changing the way we process mapping information to follow dependencies in the various types of information. What we do currently (in the metamodel code) is essentially the same as the legacy code. That is to say we process through a mapping source in full and then move on to the next one, saving off "second passes" whenever we encounter information on which we have to wait. The second passes in the new metamodel code are isolated I guess (so far) to org.hibernate.metamodel.source.internal.EntityReferenceResolver What I proposed instead is quite different, more like what I did for the rest of the MetadataImpl constructor code in terms of defining dependencies and processing stuff in an order that makes sure to avoid the need for second passes. Here is the initial swab at the levels of information: 1) entity - basic entity information such as name, hierarchy 2) identifiers - normal identifiers could almost be handled in the first level. key-many-to-one still needs some form of delayed queuing. 3) secondary tables 4) attributes 5) associations The dependencies flow downward; (2) depends on (1); (3) depends on (2); etc. I liked handling (3) secondary tables separately because they basically expand the possible set of columns available for (4) and (5). -- Steve Ebersole <steve(a)hibernate.org&gt; http://hibernate.org