to the best of my knowledge the attached files contain the full definition of the entities in question

I mis-spoke - I meant that these entities are as close as possible to the original definitions (98%) - I wish I could bring the exact code, but it involves many other definitions. I tried to keep it as close as possible to the original without compromising (AFAIK) the JPA mapping. In any case, now that we have my test code framework perhaps it might be easier to try stuff out...