"tonylmai" wrote:


Can I create a new object of this class with just the message and let Hibernate create the id?

Yes

"tonylmai" wrote:

In the database end, do I create the table for this entity with column id declared as bigint?

Hibernate does this automatically for you if you set "hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto" property to "create"

In Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 (O'Reilly 2006) it states "The AUTO strategy tells the persistence provider that you are allowing it to generate the key for you" (page 94).

I don't specifically know the Hibernate implements this feature, but might I suggest that you utilize the features of your database to create primary keys instead.

With Postgresql you could use a mapping like this:

@Id
 @Column(name = "id", unique = true, nullable = false)
 @SequenceGenerator(name="identifier", sequenceName="ppl_id_seq", allocationSize=1)
 @GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.SEQUENCE, generator="identifier")
 @NotNull
 public int getId()
 {
 return this.id;
 }

In this manner Hibernate would assign primary keys from the Postgresql sequence rather than internally. This would allow Hibernate to "play nicely" with other database users.