What is the portable way to annotate a byte[] property?
It depends on what you want. JPA can persist a non annotated byte[]. From the JPA 2.0 spec:
11.1.6 Basic Annotation
The
Basicannotation is the simplest
type of mapping to a database column.
TheBasicannotation can be applied
to a persistent property or instance
variable of any of the following
types: Java primitive, types, wrappers
of the primitive types,
java.lang.String,
java.math.BigInteger,
java.math.BigDecimal,
java.util.Date,
java.util.Calendar,java.sql.Date,
java.sql.Time,java.sql.Timestamp,
byte[],Byte[],char[],Character[], enums, and any other
type that implementsSerializable.
As described in Section 2.8, the use
of theBasicannotation is optional
for persistent fields and properties
of these types. If the Basic
annotation is not specified for such a
field or property, the default values
of the Basic annotation will apply.
And Hibernate will map a it “by default” to a SQL VARBINARY (or a SQL LONGVARBINARY depending on the Column size?) that PostgreSQL handles with a bytea.
But if you want the byte[] to be stored in a Large Object, you should use a @Lob. From the spec:
11.1.24 Lob Annotation
A
Lobannotation specifies that a
persistent property or field should be
persisted as a large object to a
database-supported large object type.
Portable applications should use the
Lobannotation when mapping to a
databaseLobtype. TheLobannotation
may be used in conjunction with the
Basic annotation or with the
ElementCollectionannotation when the
element collection value is of basic
type. ALobmay be either a binary or
character type. TheLobtype is
inferred from the type of the
persistent field or property and,
except for string and character types,
defaults to Blob.
And Hibernate will map it to a SQL BLOB that PostgreSQL handles with a oid
.
Is this fixed in some recent version of hibernate?
Well, the problem is that I don’t know what the problem is exactly. But I can at least say that nothing has changed since 3.5.0-Beta-2 (which is where a changed has been introduced)in the 3.5.x branch.
But my understanding of issues like HHH-4876, HHH-4617 and of PostgreSQL and BLOBs (mentioned in the javadoc of the PostgreSQLDialect) is that you are supposed to set the following property
hibernate.jdbc.use_streams_for_binary=false
if you want to use oid i.e. byte[] with @Lob (which is my understanding since VARBINARY is not what you want with Oracle). Did you try this?
As an alternative, HHH-4876 suggests using the deprecated PrimitiveByteArrayBlobType to get the old behavior (pre Hibernate 3.5).
References
- JPA 2.0 Specification
- Section 2.8 “Mapping Defaults for Non-Relationship Fields or Properties”
- Section 11.1.6 “Basic Annotation”
- Section 11.1.24 “Lob Annotation”