When you load an embeding class, it may load its embedded collections either lazily or eagerly.

Important points about eager and lazy fetch types in Hibernate

1. By default, when you load an embedding class (E.g. User or Company) using session.get,

   • its embedded collections (E.g. AddressList or EmployeeList) is not actually retrieved from database, but only the top level fields are retrieved.

There might be situations where you would want to modify the attributes of the embedded class (eg. Address) within an embedding class (eg. User), for instance, changing the database column name for a field.

We can use @AttributeOverride annotation to override the details of a field of the embedded class and then enclose all such @AttributeOverride annotations inside @AttributeOverrides annotation.

There might be situations where you would want to modify the attributes of the embedded class (eg. Address) within an embedding class (eg. User), for instance, changing the database column name for a field. You can do this within the embedded class itself. But what if you don’t have access to the embedded class or if you want different behavior for two different instances of the embedded class; you will have to override the embedded class behavior in the embedding class.

We have already seen the definition and properties of an entity and value class in http://javajee.com/entities-and-value-types-in-hibernate-43. We will not see how we can actually embed a value type within an entity. We will also see how we can embed a collection inside an entity.

Here we will discuss most commonly used basic annotations in hibernate - @Entity, @Table, @Id, @GeneratedValue, @Column, @Basic, @Transient, @Temporal and @Lob. Even though many annotations has both JPA (java.persistance) and hibernate (org.hibernate) versions, it is preferred to use JPA annotations whenever possible. As you can see below, some of the hibernate specific annotations are already deprecated.