Here is parent class Enterprise. It has employers and one of them is president of enterprise.
@Entity class Enterprise { // fields @OneToMany public List getEmployers() // implementation @OneToOne public Employee getPresident() // implementation }
Here is child Employee class. It has only info about Enterprise where he works. But question is what association should I use?
@Entity class Employee { // fields // what association should I use? public Enterprise getEnterprise() // implementation }
Given that you've defined the Enterprise
->Employers
association with @OneToMany
, which means that an Employer
belongs to only one Enterprise
, you should be using @ManyToOne
, meaning that every Employer
belongs to max. 1 Enterprise
, but an Enterprise
can reference many Employers
.
You can define the association specifics (join columns, etc) in one of the sides only, using the mapped-by
attribute in the annotation:
@Entity class Enterprise { @OneToMany(mapped-by="enterprise") public List getEmployers() // implementation @OneToOne public Employee getPresident() // implementation } @Entity class Employee { @ManyToOne @JoinTable ( name="Enterprise", joinColumns={ @JoinColumn(name="ENT_ID", referencedColumnName="ENT_ID") } public Enterprise getEnterprise() // implementation }
In case an Employer
could be president of a different Enterprise
in which he is employed (seems unlikely, unless one can be president of an enterprise without being employed by it), and in case you needed to access the Enterprise
of which the Employer
is president from the Employer
entity, you would need to add another association, ideally with @OneToOne
(you would encounter problems, because @OneToOne relations require both entities to have the same @Id class). In this case I would annotate the getPresidedEnterprise()
method on Employer
with @ManyToOne
for practical reasons.
Use @ManyToOne
annotation. It is the opposite side of a one-to-many relation. It says an employee can have one enterprise, but an enterprise can have many employees.
You should have two properties on the Employee class. Employee table should have a reference to an enterprise, ad enterprise should have a reference to an employee-president.
(you could also probably subclass an Employee based on the isPresident flag column, but I don't have experience with that)
@Entity class Enterprise { // fields @OneToMany(mappedBy="enterprise") public List getEmployees(){} @OneToOne @JoinColumn(name="PRESIDENT_ID") public Employee getPresident(){} } @Entity class Employee { // fields @ManyToOne @JoinColumn(name="ENTERPRISE_ID") public Enterprise getEnterprise(){} @OneToOne(mappedBy="President") public Enterprise getMyEnterprise(){} }