"ataylor" wrote : I think what Tim's trying to say is that since we dont have a domain model that maps to our database we cant just annotate the message and messageref objects to be able to save them direct via a hibernate session. i.e. look at the messageref object and compare it with the database table, it has other fields such as channell_id and transaction_id. Yes that's pretty much it anonymous wrote : | how about writing some ansii standard sql and just using JDBC, our schema isnt very complex and we should be able to do that? | Not sure that's going to work or we'd have done it already - there is significant difference between the databases for the types used to store blobs for instance amongst other things. Time to reach for the Hibernate book soon.......... View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4112575#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...