"not-null property references a null or transient value" At Delete

[Zain Rizvi]

I am able to save the objects in the database, but not delete them.

I have the following classes:

 public class Action{
  Set<Participant> participants;
  Set<Effect> effects;
  Set<Precondition> preconditions;
  ...
 }

 public class Participant{
  Action action;
  ...
 }

 public class Effect{
  Participant participantA;
  Participant participantB;
  Action action;
  ...
 }

 public class Precondition{
  Participant participantA;
  Participant participantB;
  Action action;
  ...
 }

Here are the hibernate mapping
<hibernate-mapping package="project.action"> <class name="Action" table="action"> <id name="actionId" type="java.lang.Integer" column="action_id" unsaved-value="0"> <generator class="native" /> </id> <set name="participants" inverse="true" lazy="false" cascade="all-delete-orphan" access="field"> <key column="action_id" not-null="true"/> <one-to-many class="Participant" /> </set> <set name="preconditions" inverse="true" lazy="false" cascade="all-delete-orphan" access="field"> <key column="action_id" not-null="true"/> <one-to-many class="Precondition" /> </set> <set name="effects" inverse="true" lazy="false" cascade="all-delete-orphan" access="field"> <key column="action_id" not-null="true"/> <one-to-many class="Effect" /> </set> ... </class> </hibernate-mapping>
<hibernate-mapping package="project.action"> <class name="Participant" table="participant"> <id name="participantId" type="java.lang.Integer" column="participant_id" unsaved-value="0"> <generator class="native" /> </id> <many-to-one name="action" class="Action" column="action_id" not-null="true" /> ... </class> </hibernate-mapping>
<hibernate-mapping package="project.action"> <class name="Effect" table="effect"> <id name="effectId" type="java.lang.Integer" column="effect_id" unsaved-value="0"> <generator class="native" /> </id> <many-to-one name="action" class="Action" column="action_id" not-null="true" /> <many-to-one name="participantA" class="Participant" column="participant_a_id" not-null="true"/> <many-to-one name="participantB" class="Participant" column="participant_b_id" not-null="true"/> ... </class> </hibernate-mapping>
<hibernate-mapping package="project.action"> <class name="Precondition" table="precondition"> <id name="preconditionId" type="java.lang.Integer" column="precondition_id" unsaved-value="0"> <generator class="native" /> </id> <many-to-one name="action" class="Action" column="action_id" not-null="true" /> <many-to-one name="participantA" class="Participant" column="participant_a_id" not-null="true"/> <many-to-one name="participantB" class="Participant" column="participant_b_id" not-null="true"/> ... </class> </hibernate-mapping>

When I try to do

 sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().delete(action);

I get the following error:

org.hibernate.PropertyValueException: not-null property references a null or transient value: project.action.Precondition.participantA

One fix I found was, if I change the cascade values (in the Action hbm) to "save-update", and then delete each component separately. But I don't want to do that.
I think another solution would be if I can tell hibernate the order to delete the components, but I cannot find how to do this.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you

[Pablo Abbate]

Please try with inverse = false and let us know ...

[Zain Rizvi]

Doing inverse="false" for the sets required me to do
<many-to-one name="action" class="Action" column="action_id" not-null="true" insert="false" update="false"/>
in all 3 classes; Participant, Precondition, and Effect.

But running the application gave me the error

An error occurred while executing this method. Error message: not-null property references a null or transient value: project.Precondition.participantA
org.hibernate.PropertyValueException: not-null property references a null or transient value: project.action.Precondition.participantA