If I am understanding your question you need to have the relationship in your User POJO that returns the collection. in your setter method add the annotation for @JoinTable to enforce the sql relationship you want you also may have to implement Comparable to enforce the collection you want on UserPreference. Another approach that may be more effective is to use a NamedQuery View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4044008#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...