Hibernate bi-directional many-to-many cascade confusion

Question

I'm a hibernate newbie and I'm not entirely sure how to get the cascade behavior I'm looking for.

Let's say I have two classes A and B with bi-directional many-to-many mappings to each other. A is the owner side and B is the inverse side (I hope I have the terminology correct).

public class A
{
    private Set<B> bSet = new HashSet<B>();

    @ManyToMany(targetEntity=B.class, cascade=CascadeType.?)
    public Set<B> getBSet()
    {
        return bSet;
    }
}

public class B
{
    private Set<A> aSet = new HashSet<A>();

    @ManyToMany(mappedBy="bSet", targetEntity=A.class, cascade=CascadeType.?)
    public Set<B> getBSet()
    {
        return bSet;
    }
}

I want to select the correct cascade type so that when I delete an A object, any B object containing it is updated and vice-versa.

Which cascade type(s) do I need here?

Answer 1

CascadeType.ALL so every operation affects the other class. See link text