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Asked: 2026-05-17T01:15:03+00:00

is it possible to model a reference to any (entity) with JPA? Similar to

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is it possible to model a reference to “any” (entity) with JPA? Similar to a reference of type Object in Java, which can hold any object.

Thanks for your answer,

Dominik

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  1. Editorial Team

    You should think about representation of the reference in database.

    • If reference is represented by a single foreign key, then referenced column should be guaranteed to be unique for all possible referenced entities. In JPA it’s possible only for entites in inheritance hierarchy, so you’ll get a reference to the root of some inheretence hierarchy of entites instead of Object.
    • Reference may be represented by a pair of values <type of referenced entity, foreign key>. This case is not supported by plain JPA, but supported in Hibernate by Hibernate’s own @Any annotation.
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