This is not an error which I got. This is an error that bugged one of my friend for a few days.
The error is
org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateSystemException: Don’t change the reference to a collection with cascade=”all-delete-orphan”: com.test.Cat.kittens; nested exception is org.hibernate.HibernateException: Don’t change the reference to a collection with cascade=”all-delete-orphan”: com.test.Cat.kittens on 10.01.2009@15.26.33
<hibernate-mapping package="com.test">
<class name="Cat" lazy="false">
......
......
......
<set name="kittens" table="kitten" order-by="kitten_name asc" inverse="true" cascade="all-delete-orphan">
<key column="cat_id"/>
<one-to-many class="Kitten"/>
</set>
</class>
</hibernate-mapping>
We researched a few solutions on the net. The following solutions are based mainly on the two sources
http://forum.springframework.org/showthread.php?t=25809
http://www.hibernate.org/117.html#A3
Since I myself did not get this problem I can’t give much details. And the solutions below may or may not work for you.
There are two ways to solve this problem
i) If posible switch to the latest version of the Hibernate. Even though it is not a bug in the Hibernate, some people reported that somehow this problem doesn’t appear in the new version of hibernate.
Caution: If your application uses Hibernate extensively then you might consider testing the application throughly after upgrade. If you can’t upgrade for some reasons, then read on
ii) If you can’t upgrade then as per the solutions provided on the forums, you should call clear() if you need to remove the collections marked as all-delete-orphan.
Fair enough. Makes sense, since you are cascading the delete you should inform Hibernate if you intend to remove the collection.
For example,
Instead of doing something like this.
public void removeKittens(){
//Load Cat with kittens
Cat cat = getHibernateTemplate().get(Cat.class, 1234);
cat.setKittens(null);
getHibernateTemplate().save(cat);
}
Do something like this
public void removeKittens(){
//Load Cat with kittens
Cat cat = getHibernateTemplate().get(Cat.class, 1234);
cat.getKittens.clear();
getHibernateTemplate().save(cat);
}
As I said this is not a bug in Hibernate’s older version. But somehow in the new version, as people reported on the forums, this problem is not there. That means you are not required to call clear(). I am not sure because I have not faced this problem myself.
In the pojo for Cat , there should be something like
public void setKittens(Set kittens) {
this.kittens= kittens;
}
Instead of this.kittens = kittens;
do like :
this.kittens.clear();
this.kittens.addAll(kittens);