I have not looked too deeply into this just yet, but off the hip I am not convinced the descriptors are the culprit here; at least not from the perspective that this worked under 5.2.17 and then doesn't under 5.3.0. The reason I say that is because these types have not been radically modified in anyway since their inception in 2010. I'm going to do a deep investigation tomorrow, but I ponder if its not something else that might have changed. Hibernate 5.3 introduced JPA 2.2 compliance, so its also possible that a new default JPA compliance setting might be at play here and it could simply be toggle change that might be the cause. I'll get back to you tomorrow.