Hibernate bidirectional @ManyToOne, updating the not owning side not working

Question

I have a really simple setup to try out a bidirectional mapping with annotations:

@Entity
public class TypeA extends AbstractModel {

    @Id
           


        

Answer 1

The owning side is TypeB, so you need to call setA(), since the association is only managed by the owning side.

Answer 2

For a consistent domain model you should always set both sides of the relation, like this:

TypeB b = new TypeB();

TypeA a = new TypeA();
a.setBs(ListUtils.createList(b));
b.setA(a);   

this.typeBDao.save(b);
this.typeADao.save(a);

When your entities are in an inconsistent state, JPA will always store values according to the object state of the owning side of the JPA relation. In this case TypeB owns the relation to TypeA. Thus if an object of TypeB does not have a reference to TypeA, JPA assumes there is no relation defined.

Answer 3

This is the way it's supposed to work: the owning side is the one which owns the relationship, and which is responsible of managing it in database. It's the responsibility of the developer (i.e. your responsibility) to make sure your object graph is always coherent : if one side of a relationship is modified, then the other side should be modified as well.

If you don't always do this, you must at least make sure to modify the owning side of the relationship, because Hibernate only cares about the owning side..