Cascade Operations in the order Application

Entities that have relationships to other entities often have dependencies on the existence of the other entity in the relationship. For example, a line item is part of an order, and if the order is deleted, then the line item should also be deleted. This is called a cascade delete relationship.

In order, there are two cascade delete dependencies in the entity relationships. If the Order to which a LineItem is related is deleted, then the LineItem should also be deleted. If the Vendor to which a VendorPart is related is deleted, then the VendorPart should also be deleted.

You specify the cascade operations for entity relationships by setting the cascade element in the inverse (non-owning) side of the relationship. The cascade element is set to ALL in the case of Order.lineItems. This means that all persistence operations (deletes, updates, and so on) are cascaded from orders to line items.

Here is the relationship mapping in Order:

@OneToMany(cascade=ALL, mappedBy="order")
public Collection<LineItem> getLineItems() {
    return lineItems;
}

Here is the relationship mapping in LineItem:

@ManyToOne
    public Order getOrder() {
    return order;
}