Is Hibernate 3.2.6.GA a production ready release? I don’t think so.

It is amazing! Hibernate 3.2.6.GA does not support joined inheritance strategy!
There is a Bug (HHH-1657) reported since Apr/10/2006 and it is not fixed yet!

Hey Hibernate guys, how can you call this a production release when it is no at least a working JPA feature complaint release?

Actor-Role Pattern. A JPA Implementation.

Actor-Role Pattern introduction

You can find a quick intro to the pattern in wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role_Class_Model

JPA Implementation (Mapping)

Here is the source code with JPA annotations:

Download source here (Netbeans 6.0 Project)

The basic idea of this pattern is “use delegation instead of inheritance” then you can refer the actor through its role which also provides specific attributes and behaviors in relation to the context where it is used.

For example, in the Invoice Class you reference a Customer (Not a Person) but you can access the person through a invoice.getCustomer().getActor().

The rest is straightforward, see the code.

JPA: A Basic Intro.

This is a basic intro to JPA. It is not a manual neither a reference, it is just an intro to the concepts.

Presentation: JPA Basic Intro