Imaginons maintenant le modèle de relation entre Customer, Order, LineItem et Product. Il y a une association un-vers-plusieurs entre Customer et Order, mais comment devrions nous représenter Order / LineItem / Product? J'ai choisi de mapper LineItem comme une classe d'association représentant l'association plusieurs-vers-plusieurs entre Order et Product. Dans Hibernate, on appelle cela un élément composite.

Le document de mapping :
<hibernate-mapping>
<class name="Customer" table="customers">
<id name="id">
<generator class="native"/>
</id>
<property name="name"/>
<set name="orders" inverse="true">
<key column="customer_id"/>
<one-to-many class="Order"/>
</set>
</class>
<class name="Order" table="orders">
<id name="id">
<generator class="native"/>
</id>
<property name="date"/>
<many-to-one name="customer" column="customer_id"/>
<list name="lineItems" table="line_items">
<key column="order_id"/>
<list-index column="line_number"/>
<composite-element class="LineItem">
<property name="quantity"/>
<many-to-one name="product" column="product_id"/>
</composite-element>
</list>
</class>
<class name="Product" table="products">
<id name="id">
<generator class="native"/>
</id>
<property name="serialNumber"/>
</class>
</hibernate-mapping>customers, orders, line_items et products contiennent les données de customer, order, order line item et product. line_items est aussi la table d'association liant orders à products.
create table customers (
id BIGINT not null generated by default as identity,
name VARCHAR(255),
primary key (id)
)
create table orders (
id BIGINT not null generated by default as identity,
customer_id BIGINT,
date TIMESTAMP,
primary key (id)
)
create table line_items (
line_number INTEGER not null,
order_id BIGINT not null,
product_id BIGINT,
quantity INTEGER,
primary key (order_id, line_number)
)
create table products (
id BIGINT not null generated by default as identity,
serialNumber VARCHAR(255),
primary key (id)
)
alter table orders
add constraint ordersFK0 foreign key (customer_id) references customers
alter table line_items
add constraint line_itemsFK0 foreign key (product_id) references products
alter table line_items
add constraint line_itemsFK1 foreign key (order_id) references orders