Did you think of other ways this could be implemented or was it the only option available?

Allow join on any property using property-ref --------------------------------------------- Key: HHH-1829 URL: http://opensource.atlassian.com/projects/hibernate/browse/HHH-1829 Project: Hibernate Core Issue Type: New Feature Components: metamodel Affects Versions: 3.2.0 cr1, 3.2.0.cr2 Reporter: Maarten Winkels Assignee: Anthony Patricio Attachments: AbstractJoinTest.java, HHH-1829-3.2.8-SNAPSHOT.patch, HHH-1829-mwinkels.patch, hhh-1829.patch, JoinNoPropertyRefTest.java, JoinPropertyRefTest.java, Person.hbm.xml, Person.java, PersonNoPropertyRef.hbm.xml Currently joining tables for one class (uing the <join...> tag) is only supported for the id property. The property-ref is allowed on the <key..> tag inside the <join..> tag, but this is ignored.