[hibernate-dev] Why must abstract be specified in mappings?

[Oskar Berggren]

Hi,

The Hibernate documentation (section 10.1.5. Table per concrete class
http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/orm/4.3/manual/en-US/html/ch10.html#inheritance-tableperconcrete
) says:

> If your superclass is abstract, map it with abstract="true". If it is not
abstract,
> an additional table (it defaults to PAYMENT in the example above), is
needed
> to hold instances of the superclass.

Why is this keyword needed? Couldn't abstract classes be detected
automatically using reflection?


/Oskar