Determining ManyToMany vs OneToMany using ClassMetadata

Answer 1

It's not that simple, unfortunatelly. Your best bet to detect this is by checking for particular CollectionPersister implementation:

SessionFactory sf = ...;

// Get the class' metadata
ClassMetadata cmd = sf.getClassMetadata(o.getClass());

for(String propertyName:cmd.getPropertyNames()) {
  Type propertyType = cmd.getPropertyType(propertyName);
  if (propertyType.isCollectionType()) {
    CollectionType collType = (CollectionType) propertyType;

    // obtain collection persister
    CollectionPersister persister = ((SessionFactoryImplementor) sf)
      .getCollectionPersister(collType.getRole());

    if (persister instanceof OneToManyPersister) {
      // this is one-to-many
    } else {
     // this is many-to-many OR collection of elements
    }
  } // if
} // for