diff --git a/documentation/src/main/asciidoc/introduction/Entities.adoc b/documentation/src/main/asciidoc/introduction/Entities.adoc index 7d6a8e9a4d..79ec367d56 100644 --- a/documentation/src/main/asciidoc/introduction/Entities.adoc +++ b/documentation/src/main/asciidoc/introduction/Entities.adoc @@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ An entity has _attributes_—properties or fields—which map to columns of the In particular, every entity must have an _identifier_ or _id_, which maps to the primary key of the table. The id allows us to uniquely associate a row of the table with an instance of the Java class, at least within a given _persistence context_. -We'll explore the idea of a persistence context <>. For now, just think of it as a one-to-one mapping between ids and entity instances. +We'll explore the idea of a persistence context <>. For now, think of it as a one-to-one mapping between ids and entity instances. An instance of a Java class cannot outlive the virtual machine to which it belongs. But we may think of an entity instance having a lifecycle which transcends a particular instantiation in memory. @@ -80,9 +80,10 @@ We won't have much more to say about XML-based mappings in this Introduction, si We love representing entities as classes because the classes give us a _type-safe_ model of our data. But Hibernate also has the ability to represent entities as detyped instances of `java.util.Map`. There's information in the {maps}[User Guide], if you're curious. + This must sound like a weird feature for a project that places importance on type-safety. Actually, it's a useful capability for a very particular sort of generic code. -{envers}[Hibernate Envers] is a great auditing/versioning system for Hibernate entities. +For example, {envers}[Hibernate Envers] is a great auditing/versioning system for Hibernate entities. Envers makes use of maps to represent its _versioned model_ of the data. ****