Orphan delete doesn't seem to be working properly

[Eric Nielsen]

I'm trying to set up an assocition using the hibernate "delete orphan" option. I believe I have all the annotations correct after cross referencing the hibernate book. However after removing the item from the collection, Hibernate is attempting to set the foreign key to null. Which violates a database constraint. Hibernate has been told about the not-null constraint...

Here's my code:

Competition.java

@Entity
@Table(name="competition")
@SequenceGenerator(name="competition_seq", sequenceName="competition_id_seq")
public class Competition {
@Id
@GeneratedValue(generator="competition_seq")
private Long id;

private String name;

@ManyToOne
@JoinColumn(nullable=false)
private User owner;

@OneToMany(mappedBy="competition",
cascade={CascadeType.PERSIST,CascadeType.MERGE,CascadeType.REMOVE})
@org.hibernate.annotations.Cascade(value=org.hibernate.annotations.CascadeType.DELETE_ORPHAN)
private List<Event> events=new ArrayList<Event>();;
 
public void removeEvent(final Event event) {
events.remove(event);
}
 
 
    // constructor/getter/setters removed
}

Event.java

@Entity
@SequenceGenerator(name="event_seq",sequenceName="event_id_seq")
public class Event {
@Id
@GeneratedValue(generator="event_seq")
private Long id;

@ManyToOne
@JoinColumn(nullable=false,insertable=false,updatable=false)
private Competition competition;

@Transient
private String eventType;
@Transient
private String eventClassification;
 
@ManyToOne
@JoinColumn(nullable=false)
private Level level;

@ManyToOne
@JoinColumn(nullable=false)
private Style style;
 
@ManyToMany(cascade={CascadeType.ALL},fetch=FetchType.EAGER)
@JoinTable(inverseJoinColumns=@JoinColumn(name="dance_id"))
@org.hibernate.annotations.IndexColumn(name="position")
private List<Dance> dances = new ArrayList<Dance>();
 // getters/setters/constructors removed
}

Consuming code (In actuality its a Struts 2 action using preparable and custom type converters, here I've localized all the relevant code and have tests that it gives the same error as my actual architecture. But felt I had to explain the combination of repositoty and direct entityManager access...)

Competition comp = competitionRepository.getById(1);
Event event = entityManager.find(Event.class,5); 
comp.removeEvent(event);
competitionService.save(comp); // (simply a delegated call to saveOrUpdate .. on a Hibernate Session (converted from a HibernateEntityManager typecast, etc)

Error:

17:38:04,269 ERROR JDBCExceptionReporter:78 - Batch entry 0 update Event set competition_id=NULL, level_id=1, style_id=1 where id=1 was aborted.  Call getNextException to see the cause.
17:38:04,272  WARN JDBCExceptionReporter:77 - SQL Error: 0, SQLState: 23502
17:38:04,275 ERROR JDBCExceptionReporter:78 - ERROR: null value in column "competition_id" violates not-null constraint

I had thought that the combination of the DELETE_ORPHAN on the owning side of the association and the nullable=false on the owned side would have prevented hibernate from attempting that update. What am I doing wrong?

[Eric Nielsen]

I am really stumped on this. Please, does anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong? Or what other information is needed to help diagnose the problem?