The Entity annotation denotes an entity class. All entity classes must have this annotation. The Entity annotation takes one optional property:

The equivalent XML element is entity. It has the following attributes:

As we discussed in Section 2.1, “ Identity Class ”, entities with multiple identity fields must use an identity class to encapsulate their persistent identity. The IdClass annotation specifies this class. It accepts a single java.lang.Class value.

The equivalent XML element is id-class, which has a single attribute:

A mapped superclass is a non-entity class that can define persistent state and mapping information for entity subclasses. Mapped superclasses are usually abstract. Unlike true entities, you cannot query a mapped superclass, pass a mapped superclass instance to any EntityManager or Query methods, or declare a persistent relation with a mapped superclass target. You denote a mapped superclass with the MappedSuperclass marker annotation.

The equivalent XML element is mapped-superclass. It expects the following attributes:

The Embeddable annotation designates an embeddable persistent class. Embeddable instances are stored as part of the record of their owning instance. All embeddable classes must have this annotation.

A persistent class can either be an entity or an embeddable class, but not both.

The equivalent XML element is embeddable. It understands the following attributes:

An entity may list its lifecycle event listeners in the EntityListeners annotation. This value of this annotation is an array of the listener Class es for the entity. The equivalent XML element is entity-listeners. For more details on entity listeners, see Section 3, “ Lifecycle Callbacks ”.

Here are the class declarations for our persistent object model, annotated with the appropriate persistence metadata. Note that Magazine declares an identity class, and that Document and Address are a mapped superclass and an embeddable class, respectively. LifetimeSubscription and TrialSubscription override the default entity name to supply a shorter alias for use in queries.

package org.mag;

@Entity
@IdClass(Magazine.MagazineId.class)
public class Magazine {
    ...

    public static class MagazineId {
        ...
    }
}

@Entity
public class Article {
    ...
}


package org.mag.pub;

@Entity
public class Company {
    ...
}

@Entity
public class Author {
    ...
}

@Embeddable
public class Address {
    ...
}


package org.mag.subscribe;

@MappedSuperclass
public abstract class Document {
    ...
}

@Entity
public class Contract
    extends Document {
    ...
}

@Entity
public class Subscription {
    ...

    @Entity
    public static class LineItem
        extends Contract {
        ...
    }
}

@Entity(name="Lifetime")
public class LifetimeSubscription
    extends Subscription {
    ...
}

@Entity(name="Trial")
public class TrialSubscription
    extends Subscription {
    ...
}

<entity-mappings xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/orm" 
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/orm orm_1_0.xsd"
    version="1.0">
    <mapped-superclass class="org.mag.subscribe.Document">
        ...
    </mapped-superclass>
    <entity class="org.mag.Magazine">
        <id-class class="org.mag.Magazine$MagazineId"/>
        ...
    </entity>
    <entity class="org.mag.Article">
        ...
    </entity>
    <entity class="org.mag.pub.Company">
        ...
    </entity>
    <entity class="org.mag.pub.Author">
        ...
    </entity>
    <entity class="org.mag.subscribe.Contract">
        ...
    </entity>
    <entity class="org.mag.subscribe.LineItem">
        ...
    </entity>
    <entity class="org.mag.subscribe.LifetimeSubscription" name="Lifetime">
        ...
    </entity>
    <entity class="org.mag.subscribe.TrialSubscription" name="Trial">
        ...
    </entity>
    <embeddable class="org.mag.pub.Address">
        ...
    </embeddable>
</entity-mappings>