Object-Relational Structure Mapping

In an object-relational data model, structures are user-defined data types or object types. This is similar to a Java class–it defines attributes or fields in which each attribute is one of the following:

• A primitive data type

• Another structure

• Reference to another structure

TopLink maps nested structures with the StructureMapping class. The structure mapping supports null values and shared aggregates without requiring additional settings (because of the object-relational support of the database).

See "Configuring an Object-Relational Structure Mapping" for more information.