[hibernate-dev] Use cases for many-to-many collection of proxies?

[Gail Badner]

Are there real-world use cases where an initialized many-to-many collection should contain elements that are uninitialized proxies (HibernateProxy), rather than entity instances?

Currently, it is possible to configure this behavior using either: 

<many-to-many ... fetch="select"/>
<many-to-many ... outer-join="false"/>

We are considering removing this capability if there are no real-world use cases. 

Fetch profiles do not provide this level of granularity. The fetch style for the collection itself, but not its elements, can be configured using a fetch profile. 

As far as I know, JPA does not provide this level of granularity either.

Please let us know if you are using this functionality.

Thanks,
Gail