6.2.2. Collection elements

Collections can contain almost any other Hibernate type, including: basic types, custom types, components and references to other entities. This is an important distinction. An object in a collection might be handled with "value" semantics (its life cycle fully depends on the collection owner), or it might be a reference to another entity with its own life cycle. In the latter case, only the "link" between the two objects is considered to be a state held by the collection.

The contained type is referred to as the collection element type. Collection elements are mapped by <element> or <composite-element>, or in the case of entity references, with <one-to-many> or <many-to-many>. The first two map elements with value semantics, the next two are used to map entity associations.