Why is “annotatedClasses” needed if there is @Entity?

Question

Hello I\'m building spring-hibernate application. Do i realy need configuration from below ?

Answer 1

Use the docs, Luke!

[...]Example for an AnnotationSessionFactoryBean bean definition:

<bean id="sessionFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.annotation.AnnotationSessionFactoryBean">
    <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/>
    <property name="annotatedClasses">
        <list>
            <value>test.package.Foo</value>
            <value>test.package.Bar</value>
        </list>
    </property>
</bean>

Or when using classpath scanning for autodetection of entity classes:

<bean id="sessionFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.annotation.AnnotationSessionFactoryBean">
    <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/>
    <property name="packagesToScan" value="test.package"/>
</bean>

As you can see you have a choice between defining all classes explicitly or only the package for scanning. <context:component-scan/> does not recognize Hibernate/JPA annotations and hence has no effect.