Bidirectional Relationships

In a bidirectional relationship, each entity has a relationship field or property that refers to the other entity. Through the relationship field or property, an entity class’s code can access its related object. If an entity has a related field, the entity is said to “know” about its related object. For example, if Order knows what LineItem instances it has and if LineItem knows what Order it belongs to, they have a bidirectional relationship.

Bidirectional relationships must follow these rules.

• The inverse side of a bidirectional relationship must refer to its owning side by using the mappedBy element of the @OneToOne, @OneToMany, or @ManyToMany annotation. The mappedBy element designates the property or field in the entity that is the owner of the relationship.

• The many side of many-to-one bidirectional relationships must not define the mappedBy element. The many side is always the owning side of the relationship.

• For one-to-one bidirectional relationships, the owning side corresponds to the side that contains the corresponding foreign key.

• For many-to-many bidirectional relationships, either side may be the owning side.