A little more detail is that that type is just a
String for Hibernate to use to map the
Java Type to the Database Type. So when you say type="date" there is a mapping file for Hibernate to see what database you are using and it tells how to convert a Java type to that database type that matches. So for different databases, the database type for the same java type might be different, but they are all using the same hibernate type.
For instance a type
So the type you use in your mapping file is "date" but the Java Type and the Database type might need to be different for different database.
The example above is made up to demonstrate what we mean and are not the exact mappings that Hibernate does.
Mark
