Object/relational mappings are usually defined in an XML document. The mapping document is designed to be readable and hand-editable. The mapping language is Java-centric, meaning that mappings are constructed around persistent class declarations, not table declarations.

Note that, even though many Hibernate users choose to write the XML by hand, a number of tools exist to generate the mapping document, including XDoclet, Middlegen and AndroMDA.

Lets kick off with an example mapping:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE hibernate-mapping PUBLIC
      "-//Hibernate/Hibernate Mapping DTD 3.0//EN"
          "http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-mapping-3.0.dtd">

<hibernate-mapping package="eg">

        <class name="Cat" 
            table="cats"
            discriminator-value="C">
                
                <id name="id">
                        <generator class="native"/>
                </id>

                <discriminator column="subclass" 
                     type="character"/>

                <property name="weight"/>

                <property name="birthdate"
                    type="date" 
                    not-null="true" 
                    update="false"/>

                <property name="color"
                    type="eg.types.ColorUserType"
                    not-null="true"
                    update="false"/>

                <property name="sex"
                    not-null="true" 
                    update="false"/>

                <property name="litterId"
                    column="litterId"
                    update="false"/>

                <many-to-one name="mother"
                    column="mother_id"
                    update="false"/>

                <set name="kittens"
                    inverse="true"
                    order-by="litter_id">
                        <key column="mother_id"/>
                        <one-to-many class="Cat"/>
                </set>

                <subclass name="DomesticCat"
                    discriminator-value="D">

                        <property name="name" 
                            type="string"/>

                </subclass>

        </class>

        <class name="Dog">
                <!-- mapping for Dog could go here -->
        </class>

</hibernate-mapping>

We will now discuss the content of the mapping document. We will only describe the document elements and attributes that are used by Hibernate at runtime. The mapping document also contains some extra optional attributes and elements that affect the database schemas exported by the schema export tool. (For example the not-null attribute.)