Primary Key Autogeneration for InheritenceType. TABLE_PER_CLASS

Hi All,
I am trying Exercise no 8.2 from the book Enterprise Javabeans 3.0(Oreilly). I encountered a weird behaviour . I cannot assign @Generated Value to the primary key of my Super Class while implementing
the InheritenceType.TABLE_PER_CLASS mappings.
package com.titan.domain;

import javax.persistence.*;

@Entity
@Inheritance
(strategy = InheritanceType.
TABLE_PER_CLASS)

public class Person implements java.io.Serializable
{
private int id;
private String firstName;
private String lastName;

@Id
@GeneratedValue //this is giving an error.

public int getId() { return id; }
public void setId(int id) { this.id = id; }

package com.titan.domain;

import javax.persistence.*;

@Entity
public class Customer extends Person
{......}

package com.titan.domain;

import javax.persistence.*;

@Entity
public class Employee extends Customer
{......}

While the Primary key Autogeneration works for InheritanceType. JOINED and InhertitanceType.
SINGLE_CLASS, its giving me an error for the same in InheritenceType. TABLE_PER_CLASS.

Any Idea?

I am getting this error:

: Cannot use identity column key generation with <union-subclass> mapping for:
om.titan.domain.Employee
I Depend On:
jboss.jca:service=DataSourceBinding,name=DefaultDS
Depends On Me:
jboss.j2ee:jar=titan.jar,name=DataAccessBean,service=EJB3

ObjectName: jboss.j2ee:jar=titan.jar,name=DataAccessBean,service=EJB3
State: NOTYETINSTALLED
I Depend On:
persistence.units:jar=titan.jar,unitName=titan

--- MBEANS THAT ARE THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM ---
ObjectName: persistence.units:jar=titan.jar,unitName=titan
State: FAILED
Reason: javax.persistence.PersistenceException: org.hibernate.MappingExceptio
: Cannot use identity column key generation with <union-subclass> mapping for:
om.titan.domain.Employee
I Depend On:
jboss.jca:service=DataSourceBinding,name=DefaultDS
Depends On Me:
jboss.j2ee:jar=titan.jar,name=DataAccessBean,service=EJB3

I also encounter the same error. JOINED and SINGLE_TABLE works fine but when I switch to TABLE_PER_CLASS I receive the same error.

I know I'm a little late, but maybe this answer will help somebody anyways.

One cannot use IDENTITY for primary key generation strategy with conjunction with "table per concrete class" inheritance, because in such a case the identity column must be present in each table and its values must be mutually exclusive: in a case of auto-generated value we say that they must share a seed. For example, for the hierarchy proposed in the original post:

So it is clearly not possible to use IDENTITY generation strategy, because it cannot guarantee that e.g. value 3 won't appear in any other table but EMPLOYEE.

If the generation strategy isn't specified in @GeneratedValue annotation, GenerationType.AUTO is assumed which means that the persistence provider is free to choose whichever strategy it likes, IDENTITY included. So only specifying SEQUENCE or TABLE strategies will ensure portable behaviour.

EDIT: shortened horizontal bars that looked bad due to line wrapping

But what if I am using a database like MySql that does not support sequence or table strategy for identifiers?

TABLE strategy for key generation is always available, because it can be performed by the persistence provider on its own (i.e. by performing SELECTs and INSERTs on a designated table). It is by far the most portable and flexible choice, but for some databases it's suboptimal performance-wise.

Artur,

I read in Mastering EJB 4th edition, that in EJB3.0 spec, its mentioned as single table per concrete class is not required to be supported.

do we still need to work this strategy out ? can you please clarify me this ?

- Ragav

Is it possible to use TABLE_PER_CLASS strategy where each subclass has its own native generator ?
Maybe I can supply the same SEQ for both subclasses to make sure I will have mutually exclusive IDs.
My super class it's abstract and I do not really need a table for it.