hbm.xml question

[Andy Hahn]

I have 3 tables: Company, Company_Item and Item. Company_Item holds the relationship between Company and Item. Pretty straight forward.

In my Company.hbm.xml and Item.hbm.xml files I have the following set defined. Notice I do not lazy load the CompanyItems. I load them real time:

    <!-- bi-directional one-to-many association to CompanyItem -->
    <set
        name="companyItems"
        lazy="false"
        inverse="true"
cascade="none"
    >
        <key>
            <column name="company" />
        </key>
        <one-to-many 
            class="com.something.CompanyItem"
        />
    </set>

In my CompanyItem.hbm.xml file I have the following many-to-ones defined. Notice I do not lazy load the Company and Items. I load them real time:

    <!-- bi-directional many-to-one association to Item -->
    <many-to-one
        name="item"
        class="com.something.Item"
        not-null="true"
        lazy="false"
    >
        <column name="item" />
    </many-to-one>
    <!-- bi-directional many-to-one association to Company -->
    <many-to-one
        name="company"
        class="com.comething.Company"
        not-null="true"
        lazy="false"    
    >
        <column name="company" />
    </many-to-one>

So my question is this:
If I load a Company and that automatically loads a companyItems set, then when the companyItems loads that triggers a Company to load, does the loading ever end? It seems like it could be an infinite loop. Its like looking in a mirror that faces another mirror - you see back and forth forever.

Company
--CompanyItem
--Company
--CompanyItem
--Company

Is this a problem or is Hibernate smart enough to know to not load everything n times? Thanks

[Pierre Henry]

Answer is ... YES

You have to be carefull It's not a recursive association.

I suggest you try a <many-to-many> tag for your association.