Difference Between One-to-Many, Many-to-One and Many-to-Many?

Ok so this is probably a trivial question but I'm having trouble visualizing and understanding the differences and when to use each. I'm also a little unclear as to how concepts like uni-directional and bi-directional mappings affect the one-to-many/many-to-many relationships. I'm using Hibernate right now so any explanation that's ORM related will be helpful.

As an example let's say I have the following set-up:

public class Person{
    private Long personId;
    private Set<Skill> skills;
    //Getters and setters
}

public class Skill{
    private Long skillId;
    private String skillName;
    //Getters and setters
}

So in this case what kind of mapping would I have? Answers to this specific example are definitely appreciated but I would also really like an overview of when to use either one-to-many and many-to-many and when to use a join table versus a join column and unidirectional versus bidirectional.

Looks like everyone is answering One-to-many vs. Many-to-many:

The difference between One-to-many, Many-to-one and Many-to-Many is:

One-to-many vs Many-to-one is a matter of perspective. Unidirectional vs Bidirectional will not affect the mapping but will make difference on how you can access your data.

• In Many-to-one the many side will keep reference of the one side. A good example is "A State has Cities". In this case State is the one side and City is the many side. There will be a column state_id in the table cities.

In unidirectional, Person class will have List<Skill> skills but Skill will not have Person person. In bidirectional, both properties are added and it allows you to access a Person given a skill( i.e. skill.person).

• In One-to-Many the one side will be our point of reference. For example, "A User has Addresses". In this case we might have three columns address_1_id, address_2_id and address_3_id or a look up table with multi column unique constraint on user_id on address_id.

In unidirectional, a User will have Address address. Bidirectional will have an additional List<User> users in the Address class.

• In Many-to-Many members of each party can hold reference to arbitrary number of members of the other party. To achieve this a look up table is used. Example for this is the relationship between doctors and patients. A doctor can have many patients and vice versa.

One-to-Many: One Person Has Many Skills, a Skill is not reused between Person(s)

• Unidirectional: A Person can directly reference Skills via its Set
• Bidirectional: Each "child" Skill has a single pointer back up to the Person (which is not shown in your code)

Many-to-Many: One Person Has Many Skills, a Skill is reused between Person(s)

• Unidirectional: A Person can directly reference Skills via its Set
• Bidirectional: A Skill has a Set of Person(s) which relate to it.

In a One-To-Many relationship, one object is the "parent" and one is the "child". The parent controls the existence of the child. In a Many-To-Many, the existence of either type is dependent on something outside the both of them (in the larger application context).

Your subject matter (domain) should dictate whether or not the relationship is One-To-Many or Many-To-Many -- however, I find that making the relationship unidirectional or bidirectional is an engineering decision that trades off memory, processing, performance, etc.

What can be confusing is that a Many-To-Many Bidirectional relationship does not need to be symmetric! That is, a bunch of People could point to a skill, but the skill need not relate back to just those people. Typically it would, but such symmetry is not a requirement. Take love, for example -- it is bi-directional ("I-Love", "Loves-Me"), but often asymmetric ("I love her, but she doesn't love me")!

All of these are well supported by Hibernate and JPA. Just remember that Hibernate or any other ORM doesn't give a hoot about maintaining symmetry when managing bi-directional many-to-many relationships...thats all up to the application.

1) The circles are Entities/POJOs/Beans

2) deg is an abbreviation for degree as in graphs (number of edges)

PK=Primary key, FK=Foreign key

Note the contradiction between the degree and the name of the side. Many corresponds to degree=1 while One corresponds to degree >1.

One-to-many

The one-to-many table relationship looks like this:

In a relational database system, a one-to-many table relationship associates two tables based on a Foreign Key column in the child table referencing the Primary Key of one record in the parent table.

In the table diagram above, the post_id column in the post_comment table has a Foreign Key relationship with the post table id Primary Key column:

    ALTER TABLE
        post_comment
    ADD CONSTRAINT
        fk_post_comment_post_id
    FOREIGN KEY (post_id) REFERENCES post

@ManyToOne annotation

In JPA, the best way to map the one-to-many table relationship is to use the @ManyToOne annotation.

In our case, the PostComment child entity maps the post_id Foreign Key column using the @ManyToOne annotation:

    @Entity(name = "PostComment")
    @Table(name = "post_comment")
    public class PostComment {
    
        @Id
        @GeneratedValue
        private Long id;
    
        private String review;
    
        @ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
        private Post post;
        
    }

Using the JPA @OneToMany annotation

Just because you have the option of using the @OneToMany annotation, it doesn't mean it should be the default option for all the one-to-many database relationships.

The problem with JPA collections is that we can only use them when their element count is rather low.

The best way to map a @OneToMany association is to rely on the @ManyToOne side to propagate all entity state changes:

    @Entity(name = "Post")
    @Table(name = "post")
    public class Post {
    
        @Id
        @GeneratedValue
        private Long id;
    
        private String title;
    
        @OneToMany(
            mappedBy = "post", 
            cascade = CascadeType.ALL, 
            orphanRemoval = true
        )
        private List<PostComment> comments = new ArrayList<>();
    
        //Constructors, getters and setters removed for brevity
    
        public void addComment(PostComment comment) {
            comments.add(comment);
            comment.setPost(this);
        }
    
        public void removeComment(PostComment comment) {
            comments.remove(comment);
            comment.setPost(null);
        }
    }

The parent Post entity features two utility methods (e.g. addComment and removeComment) which are used to synchronize both sides of the bidirectional association.

You should provide these methods whenever you are working with a bidirectional association as, otherwise, you risk very subtle state propagation issues.

The unidirectional @OneToMany association is to be avoided as it's less efficient than using @ManyToOne or the bidirectional @OneToMany association.

One-to-one

The one-to-one table relationship looks as follows:

In a relational database system, a one-to-one table relationship links two tables based on a Primary Key column in the child which is also a Foreign Key referencing the Primary Key of the parent table row.

Therefore, we can say that the child table shares the Primary Key with the parent table.

In the table diagram above, the id column in the post_details table has also a Foreign Key relationship with the post table id Primary Key column:

    ALTER TABLE
        post_details
    ADD CONSTRAINT
        fk_post_details_id
    FOREIGN KEY (id) REFERENCES post

Using the JPA @OneToOne with @MapsId annotations

The best way to map a @OneToOne relationship is to use @MapsId. This way, you don't even need a bidirectional association since you can always fetch the PostDetails entity by using the Post entity identifier.

The mapping looks like this:

@Entity(name = "PostDetails")
@Table(name = "post_details")
public class PostDetails {

    @Id
    private Long id;

    @Column(name = "created_on")
    private Date createdOn;

    @Column(name = "created_by")
    private String createdBy;

    @OneToOne(fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
    @MapsId
    @JoinColumn(name = "id")
    private Post post;

    public PostDetails() {}

    public PostDetails(String createdBy) {
        createdOn = new Date();
        this.createdBy = createdBy;
    }

    //Getters and setters omitted for brevity
}

This way, the id property serves as both Primary Key and Foreign Key. You'll notice that the @Id column no longer uses a @GeneratedValue annotation since the identifier is populated with the identifier of the post association.

Many-to-many

The many-to-many table relationship looks as follows:

In a relational database system, a many-to-many table relationship links two parent tables via a child table which contains two Foreign Key columns referencing the Primary Key columns of the two parent tables.

In the table diagram above, the post_id column in the post_tag table has also a Foreign Key relationship with the post table id Primary Key column:

    ALTER TABLE
        post_tag
    ADD CONSTRAINT
        fk_post_tag_post_id
    FOREIGN KEY (post_id) REFERENCES post

And, the tag_id column in the post_tag table has a Foreign Key relationship with the tag table id Primary Key column:

    ALTER TABLE
        post_tag
    ADD CONSTRAINT
        fk_post_tag_tag_id
    FOREIGN KEY (tag_id) REFERENCES tag

Using the JPA @ManyToMany mapping

This is how you can map the many-to-many table relationship with JPA and Hibernate:

    @Entity(name = "Post")
    @Table(name = "post")
    public class Post {

        @Id
        @GeneratedValue
        private Long id;

        private String title;

        @ManyToMany(cascade = { 
            CascadeType.PERSIST, 
            CascadeType.MERGE
        })
        @JoinTable(name = "post_tag",
            joinColumns = @JoinColumn(name = "post_id"),
            inverseJoinColumns = @JoinColumn(name = "tag_id")
        )
        private Set<Tag> tags = new HashSet<>();

        //Getters and setters ommitted for brevity

        public void addTag(Tag tag) {
            tags.add(tag);
            tag.getPosts().add(this);
        }

        public void removeTag(Tag tag) {
            tags.remove(tag);
            tag.getPosts().remove(this);
        }

        @Override
        public boolean equals(Object o) {
            if (this == o) return true;
            if (!(o instanceof Post)) return false;
            return id != null && id.equals(((Post) o).getId());
        }

        @Override
        public int hashCode() {
            return getClass().hashCode();
        }
    }

    @Entity(name = "Tag")
    @Table(name = "tag")
    public class Tag {

        @Id
        @GeneratedValue
        private Long id;

        @NaturalId
        private String name;

        @ManyToMany(mappedBy = "tags")
        private Set<Post> posts = new HashSet<>();

        //Getters and setters ommitted for brevity

        @Override
        public boolean equals(Object o) {
            if (this == o) return true;
            if (o == null || getClass() != o.getClass()) return false;
            Tag tag = (Tag) o;
            return Objects.equals(name, tag.name);
        }

        @Override
        public int hashCode() {
            return Objects.hash(name);
        }
    }

1. The tags association in the Post entity only defines the PERSIST and MERGE cascade types. The REMOVE entity state transition doesn't make any sense for a @ManyToMany JPA association since it could trigger a chain deletion that would ultimately wipe both sides of the association.
2. The add/remove utility methods are mandatory if you use bidirectional associations so that you can make sure that both sides of the association are in sync.
3. The Post entity uses the entity identifier for equality since it lacks any unique business key. You can use the entity identifier for equality as long as you make sure that it stays consistent across all entity state transitions.
4. The Tag entity has a unique business key which is marked with the Hibernate-specific @NaturalId annotation. When that's the case, the unique business key is the best candidate for equality checks.
5. The mappedBy attribute of the posts association in the Tag entity marks that, in this bidirectional relationship, the Post entity owns the association. This is needed since only one side can own a relationship, and changes are only propagated to the database from this particular side.
6. The Set is to be preferred, as using a List with @ManyToMany is less efficient.