Understanding Hibernate Inheritance Mapping in Java

source: naukri.com

When working with object-oriented programming in Java, inheritance is a key concept that lets us create relationships between classes. But how do we save these inherited classes to a database? This is where Hibernate inheritance mapping comes in. In this article, we’ll explore how Hibernate handles inheritance and look at different ways to map inherited classes to database tables.

What is Inheritance Mapping?

Think of inheritance mapping as a way to save parent and child classes to a database. Just like how a child class inherits properties from its parent class in Java, we need to figure out how to store this relationship in database tables.

For example, let’s say we have a parent class Vehicle and two child classes Car and Motorcycle. In Java, both Car and Motorcycle will inherit basic properties from Vehicle. When we want to save this information to a database, Hibernate gives us different strategies to do this.

Types of Inheritance Mapping Strategies

Hibernate offers four main ways to map inheritance:

1. Single Table Strategy
2. Joined Table Strategy
3. Table Per Class Strategy
4. Mapped Superclass Strategy