JPA and Hibernate Cascade DELETE OneToMany does not work

Question

I've been reading post after post and article after article trying to get cascade deletes to work with JPA/Hibernate in the latest Spring Boot version. I've read that You have to use Hibernate specific cascades and I've read that you don't. I've read that they just don't work but it seems to be a mixed bag. Everything I've tried doesn't work. The relationship is bi-directional. Doesn't Work: ``` @Entity public class Brand { @OneToMany(mappedBy = "brand", orphanRemoval = true, fetch = FetchType.LAZY) @Cascade({CascadeType.DELETE}) @JsonManagedReference("brand-tax-rate") private List taxRates; } ``` Doesn't Work: ``` @Entity public class Brand { @OneToMany(mappedBy = "brand", cascade = CascadeType.REMOVE, orphanRemoval = true, fetch = FetchType.LAZY) @JsonManagedReference("brand-tax-rate") private List taxRates; } ``` Does anything work other than deleting the `TaxRates` prior to deleting the `Brand` ? My test looks like this: ``` @RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class…

Accepted Answer

I think you want to take a look at `@OnDelete` annotation which generates a DDL-level cascade delete.

This will add an `ON DELETE CASCADE` to the `FOREIGN KEY` definition if you're using the automatic schema generation (e.g. hbm2ddl). However, using Flyway is almost always a better choice than hbm2ddl.

Your mapping becomes:

```
@OneToMany(mappedBy = "brand", orphanRemoval = true, fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
@OnDelete(action = OnDeleteAction.CASCADE)
@JsonManagedReference("brand-tax-rate")
private List<TaxRate> taxRates;
```

JPA and Hibernate Cascade DELETE OneToMany does not work

Solution

Problem