Your ERM is broken :-) If the primary key in the type table has three columns, then any foreign key referencing the type table must also have three columns. This is not a requirement of java persistence or hibernate but of any underlying sql database. Ask whoever created this mess to create a foreign key constraint between the two tables. That is the easiest way to convince them they made a mistake. Regards Felix View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4035124#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...