Hibernate: Parent/Child relationship in a single-table

Question

I hardly see any pointer on the following problem related to Hibernate. This pertains to implementing inheritance using a single database table with a parent-child relationship

Answer 1

Thanks a ton guys. I created my Employee Entity as follows:

@Entity
@Inheritance(strategy = InheritanceType.SINGLE_TABLE)
@DiscriminatorColumn(
    name="EMPLOYEE_TYPE", 
    discriminatorType = DiscriminatorType.STRING
)
@DiscriminatorValue("Employee")
public abstract class Employee {

    @Id 
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    @Column(name="EMPLOYEE_ID") 
    private Integer empId = null;

    @Column(name="EMPLOYEE_NAME") 
    private String empName = null;

    @Column(name="EMPLOYEE_SECRETARY")
    private String secretary;

    @Column(name="EMPLOYEE_PERKS")
    private int perks;       

    @ManyToOne(targetEntity = Employee.class, optional=true)
@JoinColumn(name="MANAGER_ID", nullable=true)
private Employee manager = null;

    @OneToMany  
    private Set<Employee> reportees = new HashSet<Employee>();

    ...        

    public Set<Employee> getReportees() {
        return reportees;
    } 
}

I then added other Entity classes with no body but just Discriminator columns values, such as Manager, CEO and AsstManager. I chose to let Hibernate create the table for me. Following is the main program:

SessionFactory sessionFactory = HibernateUtil.sessionFactory;
Session session = sessionFactory.openSession();
Transaction newTrans = session.beginTransaction();

CEO empCeo = new CEO();
empCeo.setEmpName("Mr CEO");
empCeo.setSecretary("Ms Lily");

Manager empMgr = new Manager();
empMgr.setEmpName("Mr Manager1");
empMgr.setPerks(1000);
empMgr.setManager(empCeo);

Manager empMgr1 = new Manager();
empMgr1.setEmpName("Mr Manager2");
empMgr1.setPerks(2000);
empMgr1.setManager(empCeo);

AsstManager asstMgr = new AsstManager();
asstMgr.setEmpName("Mr Asst Manager");
asstMgr.setManager(empMgr);

session.save(empCeo);
session.save(empMgr);
session.save(empMgr1);
session.save(asstMgr);
newTrans.commit();

System.out.println("Mr Manager1's manager is : "
        + empMgr.getManager().getEmpName());
System.out.println("CEO's manager is : " + empCeo.getManager());
System.out.println("Asst Manager's manager is : " + asstMgr.getManager());
System.out.println("Persons Reporting to CEO: " + empCeo.getReportees());

session.clear();
session.close();

The code runs fine, Hibernate was creating a column "MANAGER_EMPLOYEE_ID" on its own where it stores the FK. I specified the JoinColumn name to make it "MANAGER_ID". Hibernate also creates a table EMPLOYEE_EMPLOYED, however the data is not being persisted there.

Method getReportees() method returns a null, while getManager() works fine, as expected.

Answer 2

You are expressing two concepts here:

1. inheritance and you want to map your inheritance hierarchy in a single table.
2. a parent/child relationship.

To implement 1., you'll need to use Hibernate's single table per class hierarchy strategy:

@Entity
@Inheritance(strategy=InheritanceType.SINGLE_TABLE)
@DiscriminatorColumn(
    name="emptype",
    discriminatorType=DiscriminatorType.STRING
)
public abstract class Employee { ... }

@Entity
@DiscriminatorValue("MGR")
public class Manager extends Employee { ... }

To implement 2., you'll need to add two self-referencing associations on Employee:

• many employee have zero or one manager (which is also an Employee)
• one employee has zero or many reportee(s)

The resulting Employee may looks like this:

@Entity
@Inheritance(strategy=InheritanceType.SINGLE_TABLE)
@DiscriminatorColumn(
    name="emptype",
    discriminatorType=DiscriminatorType.STRING
)
public abstract class Employee { 

    ... 

    private Employee manager;
    private Set<Employee> reportees = new HashSet<Employee>();

    @ManyToOne(optional = true)
    public Employee getManager() {
        return manager;
    }

    @OneToMany
    public Set<Employee> getReportees() {
        return reportees;
    }

    ...
}

And this would result in the following tables:

CREATE TABLE EMPLOYEE_EMPLOYEE (
        EMPLOYEE_ID BIGINT NOT NULL,
        REPORTEES_ID BIGINT NOT NULL
    );

CREATE TABLE EMPLOYEE (
        EMPTYPE VARCHAR(31) NOT NULL,
        ID BIGINT NOT NULL,
        NAME VARCHAR(255),
        MANAGER_ID BIGINT
    );

ALTER TABLE EMPLOYEE ADD CONSTRAINT SQL100311183749050 PRIMARY KEY (ID);

ALTER TABLE EMPLOYEE_EMPLOYEE ADD CONSTRAINT SQL100311183356150 PRIMARY KEY (EMPLOYEE_ID, REPORTEES_ID);

ALTER TABLE EMPLOYEE ADD CONSTRAINT FK4AFD4ACE7887BF92 FOREIGN KEY (MANAGER_ID)
    REFERENCES EMPLOYEE (ID);

ALTER TABLE EMPLOYEE_EMPLOYEE ADD CONSTRAINT FKDFD1791F25AA2BE0 FOREIGN KEY (REPORTEES_ID)
    REFERENCES EMPLOYEE (ID);

ALTER TABLE EMPLOYEE_EMPLOYEE ADD CONSTRAINT FKDFD1791F1A4AFCF1 FOREIGN KEY (EMPLOYEE_ID)
    REFERENCES EMPLOYEE (ID);

Answer 3

I am not sure about you really want, but i think you want a Table per class hierarchy

In that case, each Entity is sorted by a DISCRIMINATOR_COLUMN as follows

@Entity
@Inheritance(strategy = InheritanceType.SINGLE_TABLE)
@DiscriminatorColumn(
    name="EMPLOYEE_TYPE", 
    discriminatorType = DiscriminatorType.STRING
)
@DiscriminatorValue("EMPLOYEE")
public class Employee {

    @Id @GeneratedValue
    @Column(name="EMPLOYEE_ID") 
    private Integer id = null;

}

And its Children is mapped according to

@Entity
@DiscriminatorValue("MANAGER")
public class Manager extends Employee {

    // Manager properties goes here        
     ...
}

In order to test, let's do the following

SessionFactory sessionFactory = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory();
Session session = sessionFactory.openSession();

/*
insert 
into
    Employee
    (EMPLOYEE_TYPE) 
values
    ('EMPLOYEE')
*/
session.save(new Employee());

/*
insert 
into
    Employee
    (EMPLOYEE_TYPE) 
values
    ('MANAGER')
*/
session.save(new Manager());

session.clear();
session.close();

But, instead of inheritance (which you can see a lot of NULL column due to more than one Entity share the same table - when using InheritanceType.SINGLE_TABLE strategy), your model would be better as follows

@Entity
public class Employee { 

    private Employee manager;
    private List<Employee> reporteeList = new ArrayList<Employee>();

    /**
    * optional=true
    * because of an Employee could not have a Manager
    * CEO, for instance, do not have a Manager
    */  
    @ManyToOne(optional=true)
    public Employee getManager() {
        return manager;
    }

    @OneToMany
    public List<Employee> getReporteeList() {
        return reporteeList;
    }

}

Feel free to choice the best approach that fulfill your needs.

regards,