I’m using before and after insert triggers to generate ids (primary key) of the form “ID_NAME-000001” in several tables. At the moment, the value of the hibernate generator class of these pojos is assigned. A random string is assigned to the object to be persisted and when it’s inserted by hibernate, the trigger assigns a correct id value.
The problem with this approach is that I’m unable to retrieve the persisted object because the id only exists in the database, not in the object I just saved.
I guess I need to create a custom generator class that could retrieve the id value assigned by the trigger. I’ve seen an example of this for oracle (https://forum.hibernate.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=973262) but I haven’t been able to create something similar for MySQL. Any ideas?
Thanks,
update:
Seems that this is a common and, yet, not solved problem. I ended up creating a new column to serve as a unique key to use a select generator class.
Hope this won’t spark a holy war for whether using surrogate key or not. But it’s time to open the conversation here.
Another approach would be just, use the generated key as surrogate key and assign a new field for your trigger assigned id. The surrogate key is the primary key. You have the logically named key (such as the “ID_NAME-000001” in your example). So your database rows will have 2 keys, the primary key is surrogate key (could be UUID, GUID, running number).
Usually this approach is preferable, because it can adapt to new changes better.
Say, you have these row using surrogate key instead of using the generated id as natural key.
Surrogate key:
Natural key:
When later a new requirement need the logical_id to be editable, auditable (was it changed, who changed it when) or transferable, having the logical_id as primary key will put you in trouble. Usually you cannot change your primary key. It’s horribly disadvantage when you already have lots of data in your database and you have to migrate the data because of the new requirement.
With surrogate key solution, it’ll be easy, you just need to add
MySQL doesn’t support sequence (IMO autoincrement isn’t comparable to sequence). It’s different from Oracle/PostgreSQL’s sequence. I guess that’s the cause why it’s difficult to port the solution from Oracle database to MySQL. PostgeSQL does.