I am creating a custom UserType in Hibernate for a project. It has been relatively straightforward until I came to the isMutable method. I am trying to figure out what this
The typical example here is the String class - it is Immutable, i.e. once the string is created you cannot change its contents or state, and if you want to then you're going to have to process it into a new copy.
isMutable returning true means you are saying this object can have its state changed by outside objects, returning false means you will have to copy this object to a new instance makign the changes to state along the way. Or as you said: "does it mean the object that holds a reference to an instance of this class will never point to a different instance".