A simple chain of 3 Entities with unidirectional ManyToOne associations and cascade = CascadeType.PERSIST to their parent entity works if every Entity has a simple id (also if they all have a sequence generator for that id).

Chain:

Company ---o Department ---o Employee

If the last Entity (most dependent) in the chain (here Employee) uses an IdClass annotation in order to reuse the id of its parent entity then:

• a) The column for that parent id can not be updatable = false or nullable = false
• b) If all a newly created and only Employee persisted, then the Order of statements is:

1. INSERT Department
2. INSERT Employee
3. INSERT Company
4. Update for Department

Effects:

• The foreign key column for the Department Id inside the Employee table must be nullable.
• Unnecessary roundtrip to the database for the UPDATE statement.

Observed Behavior:
org.hibernate.action.internal.UnresolvedEntityInsertActions logCannotResolveNonNullableTransientDependencies Department.java Employee.java Company.java EmployeeId.java JPAUnitTestCase.java
WARN: HHH000437: Attempting to save one or more entities that have a non-nullable association with an unsaved transient entity.

Expected Behavior:
Foreign key column in Department can be annotated with nullable = false.
No additional UPDATE will take place.