[eclipselink-users] remove() and a OneToMany mapping with CascadeType.PE

[patric@xxxxxxxxxxx]

Hello everyone,

I have a question regarding the importance of a remove() against a  
cascade persist mapping.

Imagine a simple parent-child situation reflecting an 1:N cardinality:

Entity class A is the parent, entity class B the child.
A defines a OneToMany mapping to B:

  @OneToMany(mappedBy="a_",
             cascade={CascadeType.PERSIST, CascadeType.MERGE} )
  private Set<B> bSet_;


In the following example one A instance references to exactly one B instance.
Both are already persisted to the database and will be read after the  
begin of the transaction.

Case #1:
When calling em.remove(B) and changing A followed by a commit, some  
strange behavior can be seen:

B will not be removed.
It seems that the change to A causes that cascade persist will cause a  
silent 'undeletion' of B.
(which happens during changeset calculation on commit)

Case #2:
When not changing A everything works expected and B will be removed.


My questions:

1. Are both cases intentional behavior?
I would expect that the explicit remove() should override the implicit  
cascade persist in either cases.

2. Is there a a workaround that a remove() will be respect with higher  
priority(beside removing the cascade on the mapping)?

Thank you and best regards,
Patric