Is it possible to remove orphaned children using cascade mer

[zihong]

Is it possible to use CascadeType.Merge, to automatically remove the children that are no longer exist in the latest data graph?


In specific, I have a example as listed in this link: http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=70455

where there is a OneToMany relationship, and I want to update db with new data. I want to merge the data to db without specifically remove those children no longer exist in the new data.

Thanks in advance.

-Zihong

[zihong]

After read EJB3 spec backwards couple times (yeah, too many times reading forwards), it seems that EJB3 doesn't requires persistance/merge by reachability. Since the annotation doesn't have the type of CascadeType.DELETE_ORPHAN, which hibernate does (org.hibernate.annotations.CascadeType.DELETE_ORPHAN, separated from cascade type MERGE), I guess merge by reachability is not supported in JBoss' EJB3 server.