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Kapitel 9. Inheritance mapping

9.1. The three strategies
9.1.1. "Tabelle-pro-Klasse"-Hierarchie
9.1.2. "Tabelle-pro-Subklasse"
9.1.3. Table per subclass: using a discriminator
9.1.4. Das Mischen der "Tabelle-pro-Klasse"-Hierarchie mit "Tabelle-pro-Subklasse"
9.1.5. "Tabelle-pro-konkrete-Klasse"
9.1.6. Table per concrete class using implicit polymorphism
9.1.7. Das Mischen impliziter Polymorphie mit anderen Vererbungsmappings
9.2. Einschränkungen

Hibernate unterstützt drei grundlegende Mapping-Strategien der Vererbung:

Desweiteren unterstützt Hibernate eine vierte, etwas andere Art der Polymorphie:

It is possible to use different mapping strategies for different branches of the same inheritance hierarchy. You can then make use of implicit polymorphism to achieve polymorphism across the whole hierarchy. However, Hibernate does not support mixing <subclass>, <joined-subclass> and <union-subclass> mappings under the same root <class> element. It is possible to mix together the table per hierarchy and table per subclass strategies under the the same <class> element, by combining the <subclass> and <join> elements (see below for an example).

It is possible to define subclass, union-subclass, and joined-subclass mappings in separate mapping documents directly beneath hibernate-mapping. This allows you to extend a class hierarchy by adding a new mapping file. You must specify an extends attribute in the subclass mapping, naming a previously mapped superclass. Previously this feature made the ordering of the mapping documents important. Since Hibernate3, the ordering of mapping files is irrelevant when using the extends keyword. The ordering inside a single mapping file still needs to be defined as superclasses before subclasses.



 <hibernate-mapping>
     <subclass name="DomesticCat" extends="Cat" discriminator-value="D">
          <property name="name" type="string"/>
     </subclass>
 </hibernate-mapping
>

Hibernate's implementation of table per subclass does not require a discriminator column. Other object/relational mappers use a different implementation of table per subclass that requires a type discriminator column in the superclass table. The approach taken by Hibernate is much more difficult to implement, but arguably more correct from a relational point of view. If you want to use a discriminator column with the table per subclass strategy, you can combine the use of <subclass> and <join>, as follows:


<class name="Payment" table="PAYMENT">
    <id name="id" type="long" column="PAYMENT_ID">
        <generator class="native"/>
    </id>
    <discriminator column="PAYMENT_TYPE" type="string"/>
    <property name="amount" column="AMOUNT"/>
    ...
    <subclass name="CreditCardPayment" discriminator-value="CREDIT">
        <join table="CREDIT_PAYMENT">
            <key column="PAYMENT_ID"/>
            <property name="creditCardType" column="CCTYPE"/>
            ...
        </join>
    </subclass>
    <subclass name="CashPayment" discriminator-value="CASH">
        <join table="CASH_PAYMENT">
            <key column="PAYMENT_ID"/>
            ...
        </join>
    </subclass>
    <subclass name="ChequePayment" discriminator-value="CHEQUE">
        <join table="CHEQUE_PAYMENT" fetch="select">
            <key column="PAYMENT_ID"/>
            ...
        </join>
    </subclass>
</class
>

Durch die optionale fetch="select"-Deklaration ruft Hibernate die ChequePayment-Subklassendaten unter Verwendung eines äußeren Verbunds (sog. "outer Join") bei Anfragen an die Superklasse nicht auf.

Alternativ kann implizite Polymorphie angewendet werden:


<class name="CreditCardPayment" table="CREDIT_PAYMENT">
    <id name="id" type="long" column="CREDIT_PAYMENT_ID">
        <generator class="native"/>
    </id>
    <property name="amount" column="CREDIT_AMOUNT"/>
    ...
</class>

<class name="CashPayment" table="CASH_PAYMENT">
    <id name="id" type="long" column="CASH_PAYMENT_ID">
        <generator class="native"/>
    </id>
    <property name="amount" column="CASH_AMOUNT"/>
    ...
</class>

<class name="ChequePayment" table="CHEQUE_PAYMENT">
    <id name="id" type="long" column="CHEQUE_PAYMENT_ID">
        <generator class="native"/>
    </id>
    <property name="amount" column="CHEQUE_AMOUNT"/>
    ...
</class
>

Notice that the Payment interface is not mentioned explicitly. Also notice that properties of Payment are mapped in each of the subclasses. If you want to avoid duplication, consider using XML entities (for example, [ <!ENTITY allproperties SYSTEM "allproperties.xml"> ] in the DOCTYPE declaration and &allproperties; in the mapping).

The disadvantage of this approach is that Hibernate does not generate SQL UNIONs when performing polymorphic queries.

Bei dieser Mapping-Strategie wird in der Regel eine polymorphe Assoziation zu Payment mittels <any> gemappt.


<any name="payment" meta-type="string" id-type="long">
    <meta-value value="CREDIT" class="CreditCardPayment"/>
    <meta-value value="CASH" class="CashPayment"/>
    <meta-value value="CHEQUE" class="ChequePayment"/>
    <column name="PAYMENT_CLASS"/>
    <column name="PAYMENT_ID"/>
</any
>

Since the subclasses are each mapped in their own <class> element, and since Payment is just an interface), each of the subclasses could easily be part of another inheritance hierarchy. You can still use polymorphic queries against the Payment interface.


<class name="CreditCardPayment" table="CREDIT_PAYMENT">
    <id name="id" type="long" column="CREDIT_PAYMENT_ID">
        <generator class="native"/>
    </id>
    <discriminator column="CREDIT_CARD" type="string"/>
    <property name="amount" column="CREDIT_AMOUNT"/>
    ...
    <subclass name="MasterCardPayment" discriminator-value="MDC"/>
    <subclass name="VisaPayment" discriminator-value="VISA"/>
</class>

<class name="NonelectronicTransaction" table="NONELECTRONIC_TXN">
    <id name="id" type="long" column="TXN_ID">
        <generator class="native"/>
    </id>
    ...
    <joined-subclass name="CashPayment" table="CASH_PAYMENT">
        <key column="PAYMENT_ID"/>
        <property name="amount" column="CASH_AMOUNT"/>
        ...
    </joined-subclass>
    <joined-subclass name="ChequePayment" table="CHEQUE_PAYMENT">
        <key column="PAYMENT_ID"/>
        <property name="amount" column="CHEQUE_AMOUNT"/>
        ...
    </joined-subclass>
</class
>

Once again, Payment is not mentioned explicitly. If we execute a query against the Payment interface, for example from Payment, Hibernate automatically returns instances of CreditCardPayment (and its subclasses, since they also implement Payment), CashPayment and ChequePayment, but not instances of NonelectronicTransaction.

There are limitations to the "implicit polymorphism" approach to the table per concrete-class mapping strategy. There are somewhat less restrictive limitations to <union-subclass> mappings.

The following table shows the limitations of table per concrete-class mappings, and of implicit polymorphism, in Hibernate.