Polymorphic Components ---------------------- Key: HHH-1910 URL: http://opensource.atlassian.com/projects/hibernate/browse/HHH-1910 Project: Hibernate3 Issue Type: New Feature Components: core Reporter: Joe Kelly Please add support for mapping polymorphic components (i.e. polymorphism in the <component> element). This has been requested and suggested in numerous Hibernate user forum threads. Here's a sampling of these threads: http://forum.hibernate.org/viewtopic.php?t=949827&highlight=component... http://forum.hibernate.org/viewtopic.php?t=947207&highlight=component... http://forum.hibernate.org/viewtopic.php?t=929436&highlight=component... http://forum.hibernate.org/viewtopic.php?t=926027&highlight=component... http://forum.hibernate.org/viewtopic.php?t=930136&highlight=abstract+... I realize that you can create a CompositeUserType to solve this problem. In fact, I have done this on numerous occasions. However, this requires writing code, which is not nearly as convenient as writing a little bit of XML.