RE: [eclipselink-dev] ER200040: New native XML metadata functionalspec

["Mike Keith" <michael.keith@xxxxxxxxxx>]

It is ambiguous according to the spec, but should not be in the EclipseLink implementation. We are saying that we are allowing

merging of multiple files, and if they happen to be two JPA mapping files then there should not be any problem as long as they

do not overlap/conflict. Overlapping/conflicting (overriding) may only happen in an el-orm.xml file.

Use case3.  Why is this ambiguous? when using either your rules or my suggestions the result  should be : Entity A will contain the mapping b (from orm.xml) and mapping c and d (from eclipse-orm.xml) and mapping x (from some-other-mapping-file).  If it truly is undefined then EclipseLink should be throwing an exception as we should not be leaving the user in on undetermined state.

This is ambiguous because, regardless if the eclipse-orm.xml file is defined or not, currently in EclipseLink's JPA implemention, an Entity defined in two mapping files will produce an ambiguous case for two reasons:

 1- The processing order of mapping files is not defined

 2- The last file processed will win