Inheritance in Hibernate Annotations??

Question

How can I use "inheritance" in Annotations? What are the advantages of using inheritance in Annotations?

Answer 1

This is a very general question, but I'd advise taking a look at the following resources:

• The documentation on how inheritance is declared via Hibernate annotations.
• This PDF file (chapter 2 of a book on Hibernate). Page 38 forwards deals with Hibernate annotations.

But the very basic answer to your question is that you should use the @Inheritance annotation, like so:

@Entity
@Inheritance(strategy = InheritanceType.TABLE_PER_CLASS)
public class Flight implements Serializable {
   ...
}

Answer 2

I would suggest using the @Inheritance annotation over the @MappedSuperclass. We have had issues in the past with @MappedSuperclass being flexible enough for our ongoing maintenance needs.