JPA/Hibernate DDL generation; CHAR vs. VARCHAR

Question

I have a JPA/Hibernate data model that I am using the Hibernate hbm2ddl tool to generate database DDL. I have some strings that should be CHAR and some that may be VARCHAR i

Answer 1

So, I finally found that you can specify a length limit for a type in the dialect. So, I've decided that anything under a length of 10 should be char and anything over that should be varchar:

registerColumnType( Types.VARCHAR, 10, "char($l)" );

That isn't exactly what I was wanting, but that is good enough. Sad that I didn't find that earlier.

Answer 2

Annotate the strings you want to map to a CHAR in the database with @Column(columnDefinition="CHAR(<your-char-length>)").