[hibernate-dev] relational model for union-subclass

[Strong Liu]

having a design question, how should we model this 

(correct me if I get this wrong)
for this inheritance hierarchy, the relational model of root entity is pushed to the sub entity, so the table of sub entity has all "root table" columns / pk
and depends on if root entity is abstract, there may or may not having a physical table for the root entity 
 

we used this org.hibernate.mapping.DenormalizedTable to model a union subclass table, and also the Table class has a org.hibernate.mapping.Table#isPhysicalTable to tell schema tool if this table should be created or not


For the new Metamodel, as Gail and I discussed, we don't want to have some fake table even for the abstract root entity, NULL for the return value of EntityBinding.getPrimaryTable() is better and clean design.

but on the other hand, the DenormalizedTable design is quite simple to impl in the Binder ( I already get it works ), esp considering we bind root entity first and don't have second pass.


wdyt?

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Best Regards,

Strong Liu <stliu at hibernate.org>
http://about.me/stliu/bio