Hibernate Explicit Inheritance Strategy

ID

java.hibernate_explicit_inheritance_strategy

Severity

info

Remediation Complexity

trivial

Remediation Risk

low

Remediation Effort

low

Resource

Reliability

Language

Java

Tags

hibernate, orm

Description

Reports @Inheritance annotations without an explicit strategy attribute. The default strategy is SINGLE_TABLE, which is rarely the right choice for non-trivial hierarchies and should be stated explicitly to document the design decision.

Rationale

Reliability — The implicit SINGLE_TABLE strategy may cause unexpected null columns and discriminator issues when the hierarchy grows. An explicit strategy makes the intent clear.

Remediation

Non-compliant code

@Entity
@Inheritance
public abstract class Vehicle { }

Compliant code

@Entity
@Inheritance(strategy = InheritanceType.JOINED)
public abstract class Vehicle { }

References