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Map hibernate many-to-one with the foreign key in subclass joined table

I'm mapping some entities using Hibernate 3 for my project and simply explained I've got kind of this:
Student entity (tstudent table)
UniversityStudent entity (tuniversitystudent table)
University entity (tuniversity table)
UniversityStudent extends from Student and has its own attributes, like the university itself, which is a foreign key into the tuniversitystudent table. It is also mapped like a subclass into the Student class, using a discriminator field:
<class name="mycompany.Student" table="tstudent" discriminator-value="BASIC">
<id name="id" column="id" type="integer">
<generator class="native" />
</id>
<discriminator column="type" />
<property name="name" column="name" />
<property name="surname" column="surname" />
<property name="phoneNumber" column="phone_number" />
<subclass discriminator-value="UNIVERSITY"
name="mycompany.UniversityStudent">
<join table="tuniversitystudent">
<key column="id_student" />
<many-to-one name="university" class="mycompany.University">
<column name="id_university" />
</many-to-one>
</join>
</subclass>
</class>
Well, now I want to have a Set collection with the UniversityStudent entities for each University. So I map it like that:
<class name="mycompany.University" table="tuniversity">
<id name="id" column="id" type="integer">
<generator class="native" />
</id>
<property name="name" column="name" />
<set name="universityStudents" table="tuniversitystudent">
<key>
<column name="id_university" />
</key>
<one-to-many class="mycompany.UniversityStudent" />
</set>
</class>
My problem comes when I want to load a University object, Hibernate complains that id_university doesn't exist in tstudent table. I checked the generated SQL query and it really tries to load it from tstudent.
Unknown column 'student0_.id_university' in 'field list'
It seems that it's recognizing that it is a subclass of the basic Student and tries to join the collection using a field in the parent table, but however the field is actually in the child table, because only university students can have a University assigned.
I tried another workaround which seems to work but it's not valid for me, that's mapping the UniversityStudent as a joined-subclass instead of a subclass with a join inside:
<joined-subclass name="mycompany.UniversityStudent" table="tuniversitystudent">
<key column="id_student" />
<many-to-one name="university" class="mycompany.University">
<column name="id_university" />
</many-to-one>
</joined-subclass>
However, I'm interested in keeping it as a subclass with a discriminator value. Any idea?

I checked out some resources and finally got into this bug: https://hibernate.atlassian.net/browse/HHH-1015, which looks absolutely compatible with your case. Checkout this old question as well, again very similar to your case.
I firstly read the definition of table per sublass given by Hibernate (I know, it is for version 3.3 but I couldn't find the same source for Hibernate 4): joined-subclass seems (to me) to be a custom implementation of subclass using a discriminator provided by Hibernate and that is a good reason to stay away from its usage. However, from what I know, the mappings table per sublass and table per subclass using a discriminator should be equivalent, that's why I believe the bug I pointed you out is really still open.
If you have time and will, you can try to use another JPA provider and check if you still run in the same issue. JPA 2.0 specifications is a thing, provider implementation is another! I recently run into another bug (related to #IdClass) which forced me to try EclipseLink and the configuration which was not working with Hibernate was right with Eclipse Link

Seems you can use Custom SQL (or HQL) for loading. Haven't tried it myself, but looks like, hmm, at least as a last resort, it provides a decent solution.
Define the query in your HBM:
<sql-query name="universityStudents">
<load-collection alias="unistu" role="University.universityStudents"/>
SELECT unistu.*, student.*
FROM tuniversitystudent unistu
JOIN tstudent student
ON unistu.id_student = student.id
WHERE unistu.id_university = :id
</sql-query>
And then use it inside University:
<set name="universityStudents" inverse="true">
<key/>
<one-to-many class="mycompany.UniversityStudent"/>
<loader query-ref="universityStudents"/>
</set>

Hibernate is updating instead of inserting, why?

I'm starting my adventure with Hibernate, so please be patient :)
I want to make mapping for two tables, for example A and B. The relation beetwen A and B is one-to-many.
I wrote this hbm.xml file:
<hibernate-mapping package="something">
<class name="A" table="A">
<id name="id" type="int" column="ID">
<generator class="native" />
</id>
<set name="setInA" sort="natural" cascade="all" lazy="false">
<key column="ANOTHER_ID"/>
<one-to-many class="B" />
</set>
</class>
<class name="B" table="B">
<id name="anotherId" type="int" column="ANOTHER_ID">
<generator class="native" />
</id>
</class>
</hibernate-mapping>
Of course I made also POJO classes A and B.
And now, when I try to do:
A a = new A();
Set<B> set = new TreeSet<B>();
set.add(new B());
a.setSetInA(set);
session.save(a);
Hibernate inserts new row to table A, but (what is the worst) is not inserting new row to B table, but only makes SQL Update on not existing row in B.
Can tell me anyone why it is happening? What I made wrong?

You should either persist B's objects firstly, or use Cascade option.

You can use Cascade without using annotations:
<set name="setInA" sort="natural" cascade="all" lazy="false" cascade="all">
<key column="ANOTHER_ID"/>
<one-to-many class="B" />
</set>
This will ensure that collection of B instances is inserted when you insert A.

Found this question while searching for causes of the same symptoms in my system. cascade="all" did not help.
In my case I solved this by adding a mapping to the list element, in this example class B.
Please note that the enclosing class (A in this example) also was versioned. Hibernate might require that versioning (used for optimistic locking) must be enabled for all nested elements. I haven't found any documentation to support this theory.

How to Stop Hibernate From Trying to Update one-to-many Over Join Table

Ok so I'm having bit of a problem with my Hibernate mappings and getting the desired behavior.
Basically what I have is the following Hibernate mapping:
<hibernate-mapping>
<class name="com.package.Person" table="PERSON" schema="MYSCHEMA" lazy="false">
<id name="personId" column="PERSON_ID" type="java.lang.Long">
<generator class="sequence">
<param name="sequence">PERSON_ID_SEQ</param>
</generator>
</id>
<property name="firstName" type="string" column="FIRST_NAME">
<property name="lastName" type="string" column="LAST_NAME">
<property name="age" type="int" column="AGE">
<set name="skills" table="PERSON_SKILL" cascade="all-delete-orphan">
<key>
<column name="PERSON_ID" precision="12" scale="0" not-null="true"/>
</key>
<many-to-many column="SKILL_ID" unique="true" class="com.package.Skill"/>
</set>
</class>
</hibernate-mapping>
<hibernate-mapping>
<class name="com.package.Skill" table="SKILL" schema="MYSCHEMA">
<id name="skillId" column="SKILL_ID" type="java.lang.Long">
<generator class="sequence">
<param name="sequence">SKILL_ID_SEQ</param>
</generator>
</id>
<property name="description" type="string" column="DESCRIPTION">
</class>
</hibernate-mapping>
So lets assume that I have already populated the Skill table with some skills in it. Now when I create a new Person I want to associate them with a set of skills that already exist in the skill table by just setting the ID of the skill. For example:
Person p = new Person();
p.setFirstName("John");
p.setLastName("Doe");
p.setAge(55);
//Skill with id=2 is already in the skill table
Skill s = new Skill()
s.setSkillId(2L);
p.setSkills(new HashSet<Skill>(Arrays.asList(s)));
PersonDao.saveOrUpdate(p);
If I try to do that however I get an error saying:
WARN (org.slf4j.impl.JCLLoggerAdapter:357) - SQL Error: 1407, SQLState: 72000
ERROR (org.slf4j.impl.JCLLoggerAdapter:454) - ORA-01407: cannot update ("MYSCHEMA"."SKILL"."DESCRIPTION") to NULL
ERROR (org.slf4j.impl.JCLLoggerAdapter:532) - Could not synchronize database state with session
org.hibernate.exception.GenericJDBCException: Could not execute JDBC batch update
The reason I am getting this error I think is because Hibernate sees that the Skill with Id 2 has 'updated' its description to null (since I never set it) and tries to update it. But I don't want Hibernate to update this. What I want it to do is insert the new Person p and insert a record into the join table, PERSON_SKILL, that matches p with the skill in the SKILL table with id=2 without touching the SKILL table.
Is there anyway to achieve this behavior?

Instead of creating the Skill object yourself:
//Skill with id=2 is already in the skill table
Skill s = new Skill()
s.setSkillId(2L);
p.setSkills(new HashSet<Skill>(Arrays.asList(s)));
You should be retrieving it from the Hibernate Session:
Skill s = (Skill) session.get(Skill.class, 2L);
p.setSkills(new HashSet<Skill>(Arrays.asList(s)));
This way the Session thinks that the skill contained in p.skills is persistent, and not transient.

This may be possible if you don't cascade all-delete-orphan which is explicitely telling hibernate to cascade the changes.
But the right way would be IMO to load load the desired Skill entity from the database and to add it to the set of skills of the Person.

Hibernate Cross Reference many-to-many Parent/Child Mapping Of Same Class

I'm having a major problem getting a parent/child relationship working for a hierarchy of a single class. Basically I have to represent a server tree like thus:
Server A
Server B
Server C
Server D
Server E
Server C
Server D
Server F
Server G
Note that the children of Servers B & E are the same. My original mapping was something like this, which was fine until I needed to have the objects for server C & D being the same instance, so having a single column for PARENT_ID got filled by the last relationship and only one of servers B or E would show the children:
<hibernate-mapping ...>
<class name="Server" ...>
...
<set name="children" cascade="all-delete-orphan" lazy="false">
<key column="PARENT_ID" />
<one-to-many class="Server" />
</set>
</class>
</hibernate-mapping>
I know I need to do some sort of cross reference table to map the fact that a server can have multiple parents, but all the examples I've found on-line contain a separate parent and child class.
Can anyone tell me how to do a cross reference parent/child mapping for the same class...? I.e. something like:
<hibernate-mapping ...>
<class name="Server" ...>
...
<set name="children" cascade="all-delete-orphan" lazy="false">
<key>
<column name="PARENT_ID" />
<column name="CHILD_ID" />
</key>
<many-to-many class="Server">
<column name="???" />
<formula>???</formula>
</many-to-many>
</set>
</class>
</hibernate-mapping>
Thanks,
Bob.

In your many-to-many mapping, set the column name to be CHILD_ID.
<many-to-many class="Server">
<column name="CHILD_ID" />
</many-to-many>
This will cause the relationship to view the child id as the id representing itself. While the one-to-many relationship will use the parent_id as the id representing itself. Should work, I haven't ran it, but I have done a similar thing before.

Doing the following:
...
<set name="children" table="SERVER_XREF" cascade="all-delete-orphan" lazy="false">
<key column="PARENT_ID" />
<many-to-many class="Server" column="CHILD_ID" />
</set>
...
appears to have resulted in the server hierarchy I was after being returned.
Cheers,

Legacy mapping with hibernate

For my current project I have to map a legacy database using hibernate, but I'm running into some problems.
The database is setup using one 'entity' table, which contains common properties for all domain objects. Properties include (among others) creation date, owner (user), and a primary key which is subsequently used in the tables for the domain objects.
A simple representation of the context is as such:
table entity
- int id
- varchar owner
table account
- int accountid (references entity.id)
table contact
- int contactid (references entity.id)
- int accountid (references account.accountid)
My problem exhibits itself when I try to add a collection mapping to my account mapping, containing all contacts belonging to the account. My attempts boil down to the following:
<hibernate-mapping>
<class name="Contact" table="entity">
<id name="id" column="id">
<generator class="native" />
</id>
<join table="contact">
<key column="contactid"/>
<!-- more stuff -->
</join>
</class>
</hibernate-mapping>
<hibernate-mapping>
<class name="Account" table="entity">
<id name="id" column="id">
<generator class="native" />
</id>
<bag name="contacts" table="contact">
<key column="accountid" />
<one-to-many class="Contact"/>
</bag>
<join table="account">
<key column="accountid"/>
<!-- more stuff -->
</join>
</class>
</hibernate-mapping>
However, when I try to fetch the account I get an SQL error, stating that the entity table does not contain a column called accountid. I see why this is happening: the mapping tries to find the accountid column in the entity table, when I want it to look in the contact table. Am I missing something obvious here, or should I approach this problem from another direction?

This looks to me like you actually need to be mapping an inheritance, using the Table Per Subclass paradigm.
Something like this:
<class name="entity" table="entity">
<id name="id" column="id">
...
</id>
<joined-subclass name="contact" table="contact">
<key column="contactid"/>
</joined-subclass>
<joined-subclass name="account" table="account">
<key column="accountid"/>
</joined-subclass>
</class>
That's approximate by the way - it's described in detail in section 9.1.2 of the Hibernate documentation (just in case you can't find it, it's called "Table per subclass").
Cheers
Rich