The cascade setting will only work in one direction, so if you put it on the OneToMany relationship you can remove entities from the collection without fear of deleting the parent. As for the second question, if you have CascadeType.ALL set, then you won't be able to set the ManyToOne side because it will be deleted when the other side is deleted. Hope that helps :) View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4057183#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...