Hibernate - Cascade recommendations

Recommendations:

• It doesn't usually make sense to enable cascade on a @ManyToOne or @ManyToMany association. Cascade is often useful for @OneToOne and @OneToMany associations.

• If the child object's lifespan is bounded by the lifespan of the parent object, make the parent a full lifecycle object by specifying CascadeType.ALL and org.hibernate.annotations.CascadeType.DELETE_ORPHAN (please refer to the Hibernate reference guide for the semantics of orphan delete)

• Otherwise, you might not need cascade at all. But if you think that you will often be working with the parent and children together in the same transaction, and you want to save yourself some typing, consider using cascade={PERSIST, MERGE}. These options can even make sense for a many-to-many association.