3.2.4.2. Single table per class hierarchy

All properties of all super- and subclasses are mapped into the same table, instances are distinguished by a special discriminator column:

@Entity
@Inheritance(strategy=InheritanceType.SINGLE_TABLE)
@DiscriminatorColumn(
    name="planetype",
    discriminatorType=DiscriminatorType.STRING
)
@DiscriminatorValue("Plane")
public class Plane { ... }

@Entity
@DiscriminatorValue("A320")
public class A320 extends Plane { ... }

@Entity
@Inheritance(strategy=InheritanceType.SINGLE_TABLE)
@DiscriminatorColumn(
    name="planetype",
    discriminatorType=DiscriminatorType.STRING
)
@DiscriminatorValue("Plane")
public class Plane { ... }

@Entity
@DiscriminatorValue("A320")
public class A320 extends Plane { ... }

Plane is the superclass, it defines the inheritance strategy InheritanceType.SINGLE_TABLE. It also defines the discriminator column through the @DiscriminatorColumn annotation, a discriminator column can also define the discriminator type. Finally, the @DiscriminatorValue annotation defines the value used to differentiate a class in the hierarchy. All of these attributes have sensible default values. The default name of the discriminator column is DTYPE. The default discriminator value is the entity name (as defined in @Entity.name) for DiscriminatorType.STRING. A320 is a subclass; you only have to define discriminator value if you don't want to use the default value. The strategy and the discriminator type are implicit.

@Inheritance and @DiscriminatorColumn should only be defined at the top of the entity hierarchy.