when i generate the mapping files and some of my attributes in the database are unique there is no unique="true" attribute set in the mapping files. i think it works also without this flag, but whats the advantage of setting this optionally as menshioned in the hibernate docs?

the code looks like this:

Code:

<property name="serialNumber" unique="true" type="java.lang.String" column="SERIAL_NUMBER"/>

is it better than this:

Code:

<property name="serialNumber" type="java.lang.String" column="SERIAL_NUMBER"/>

if there the serialNumber is already set unique in the database itself?

Moving to OT > Soft Dev, this is a hibernate question.


AFAIK this just allows Hibernate to do some more strict checking for you and possibly optimize the use of the this unique object. I think along the lines of how not-null works as well.