Nick Johnson

In any relational setting, it is wise to avoid this situation if you can:

TABLE_ONE
---------
object_id serial primary key not null
foo_id integer not null references TABLE_TWO(object_id)
bar_id integer not null references TABLE_TWO(object_id)

TABLE_TWO
---------
object_id serial primary key not null
some_field varchar(80) not null

There is no way to perform a single join from table_one to table_two to get a complete set of information, because of the references to multiple different rows in table_two. It's probably better to reorganize the relationship if you can.

The exception is if you don't necessarily need both fields. For example, if you can do without knowing anything about bar_id in most cases, you could always lazy load that field. That is, if lazy loading for 1:1 fields works in your JPA provider.

It still doesn't work with Toplink, and these bugs are STILL open:

https://glassfish.dev.java.net/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2546
https://glassfish.dev.java.net/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2554

The consequence is that I cannot static weave my model, so my only choice for now is to mark the fields as @Transient and ignore them for now. (I have a feature that tracks the changes made to every entry in a table with a changer that references an Account... for now, I just won't track the changer until I have time to come up with a better way of doing it or the glassfish folks fix their shit.)

Labels: glassfish, JPA, software, toplink