hibernate AnnotationConfiguration rather than Configuration

[crussell42]

I am trying to persist an annotated @Entity object but I do not have a mapping resource foo.hbm.xml.
If HibernateHelper.java returned an AnnotationConfiguration rather than
a Configuration It would seem I could then specify a property in hibernate.cfg.xml such as

<mapping package="foo"/>
<mapping class="foo.MyAnnotatedFooClass"/>

Which then would allow my annotated class to be stored using a HibernateLongInstance
rather than as a blob (since my annotated class is Serializable)
So Then I put this at the top of jbpm.varmapping.xml (which I havent seen as example but seems to work...except for the resulting exception).

 <jbpm-type>
 <matcher>
 <bean class="org.jbpm.context.exe.matcher.ClassNameMatcher">
 <field name="className"><string value="foo.MyAnnotatedFooClass" /></field>
 </bean>
 </matcher>
 <variable-instance class="org.jbpm.context.exe.variableinstance.HibernateLongInstance" />
 </jbpm-type>

From hibernate docs

Interesting here is the use of AnnotationConfiguration. The packages and annotated classes are declared in your regular XML configuration file (usually hibernate.cfg.xml).
Note that you can mix the hbm.xml use and the new annotation one.
The resource element can be either an hbm file or an EJB3 XML deployment descriptor. The distinction is transparent for your configuration process.

Exception received when I try this strategy

javax.ejb.EJBException: org.hibernate.MappingException: An AnnotationConfiguration instance is required to use <mapping package="foo.MyAnnotatedFooClass"/>

[crussell42]

-or- have a configuration class property in jbpm.cfg.xml which allows us to specify what configuration class to use?
jbpm.session.factory.configuration.class="org.hibernate.cfg.AnnotationConfiguration"

That way if it is a hibernate version issue, the default could be just Configuration.

[crussell42]

IT WORKS!
After much head banging and incorrect assumptions I think I have it.
Please developers of jbpm can you look at this seriously as a means of persisting annotated pojos.
In HibernateHelper I added the following code

import org.hibernate.cfg.AnnotationConfiguration;
import org.hibernate.cfg.DefaultComponentSafeNamingStrategy;
.
.
public static Configuration createConfiguration(String cfgXmlResource, String propertiesResource) {
 AnnotationConfiguration configuration = new AnnotationConfiguration();
 //NOT SURE WHY BUT configuration not picking up
 //hibernate.cfg.xml
 //<property name="hibernate.ejb.naming_strategy">
 //org.hibernate.cfg.DefaultComponentSafeNamingStrategy</property>
 log.debug("NAMING START STRATEGY ["+configuration.getNamingStrategy().getClass().getName()+"]");
 log.debug(configuration.setNamingStrategy(new DefaultComponentSafeNamingStrategy()));
 log.debug("NAMING AFTER STRATEGY ["+configuration.getNamingStrategy().getClass().getName()+"]");

With these changes you can now add mappings to the hibernate.cfg.xml
such as

<mapping package="foo"/>
<mapping class="foo.MyAnnotatedFooClass"/>

To pick up annotated classes....
Now I also had to put my classes in jbpm-jpdl.jar but I will figure out the class loader issues later.
Net effect: my annotated classes persist where I expect them to.

[aguizar]

Sounds like a neat, easy-to-add feature. Why don't you create a feature request in our issue tracking application?

http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBPM

Please reference this forum topic from your request.

[crussell42]

Submitted as feature request to jira

http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBPM-832

[tom.baeyens]

i'll ask the hibernate guys about the 'why'... if it makes sense (which i assume it will), i'll include it