bidirectional many-to-many association mapping Vs ternary association mapping ?

[kri shan]

In the hiberante mapping, what is the difference between bidirectional many-to-many association mapping and ternary association mapping ?

[Peer Reynders]

Difference?
A ternary association is the practice of modeling a many-to-many relationship through the introduction of an association entity (table/object) in between the related entities and simplifying the relationships:

[A]{many-to-many}[B] => [A]{one-to-many}[AssocEntity]{many-to-one}[B]

Hibernates gives you the option to create a ternary association by either realizing the association object explicitly (usually the preferred approach, as it is often later discovered that there are actually properties that belong to the association object- making it a full blown object rather than a modeling construct) or through a Map on the related objects with the association as the index (see 6.9. Ternary Associations, Flexible Mapping).

See also: Confused�