Hibernate many to many relationship and cascade deletion

Question

Using Hibernate, I have the following classes :

public class Person { @ManyToMany(fetch=FetchType.LAZY) @Cascade(CascadeType.ALL) @JoinTable(name = "person_address", joinColumns = { @JoinColumn(name = "person_id") }, inverseJoinColumns = { @JoinColumn(name = "address_id") }) public List<Address> getAddresses() { return addresses; } } public class Address { ... @ManyToMany(mappedBy="addresses", fetch=FetchType.LAZY) @Cascade(CascadeType.ALL) public List<Person> getPersons() { return persons; } }

My question is : Is it possible that deleting an element of the relationship between Address and Person, "orphans" elements of Address are also deleted. In other words I don't want to have addresses that are not linked to a person.

Thanks, Marc.

axtavt · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-13 15:27:17Z

3

No, it's not possible. Hibernate doesn't provide orphan removal functionality for many-to-many relationships.

answered Apr 13, 2011 at 15:27

axtavt

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Comments

Mr. Nobody · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-13 15:34:52Z

1

Why would you like to do that? You can delete any of the entities (a Person or an Address) and Hibernate will ensure the consistency based on the annotation you have defined.

Manually deleting links between the different tables is an unnecessary risk in this case.

answered Apr 13, 2011 at 15:34

Mr. Nobody

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1 Comment

Marc Over a year ago

Hi thanks for your answer. Imagine you have an address shared by 2 persons. 1 of theses persons changes his address. So the address is only linked to 1 person after that. In this case you don't want to remove the address of course. But if the remaining person also changes his address. Then the initial address is orphan in this case as there aren't any links to it in the relationship. In this case I'd like to remove it as an address alone doesn't make any sense.

Aravindan R · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-13 15:17:47Z

0

org.hibernate.annotations.CascadeType.DELETE_ORPHAN can be used to deleted orphans.

answered Apr 13, 2011 at 15:17

Aravindan R

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1 Comment

Marc Over a year ago

No it does not the job and furthermore org.hibernate.annotations.CascadeType.DELETE_ORPHAN is deprecated.

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