jpa - orm.xml does not override annotations

Question

I ran into an issue where JPA on Derby defaults the BLOB size to 64KB. I can resolve this by setting the columnDefinition="BLOB(128M)". However, this fails during integration testing against another RDBMS like MS SQL. What I'd like to do is set the columnDefinition using the orm.xml. However, my attempts have been futile and am unable to get this to work. It doesn't appear that the values set in orm.xml are overriding the annotations as I would expect.

I am using JPA 1.0, Toplink Essentials 2.1.60.

I have the following entity annotated as such:

package foo;

@Entity
@Table(name = "Attachment")
public class Attachment implements Serializable {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Integer id;
    @Version
    @Column(name = "VERSION")
    private Integer version;
    @Column(name = "FILE_NAME", nullable = false)
    private String name;
    @Lob
    @Basic
    @Column(name = "ATTACHED_FILE", nullable = false)
    private byte[] file;
}

persistence.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<persistence version="1.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence"         
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence 
    http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/persistence_1_0.xsd">
    <persistence-unit name="LAS-OOC" transaction-type="RESOURCE_LOCAL">
        <provider>${jpa.provider}</provider>
        <!-- this isn't required, i know, but I'm trying everything I can think of -->
        <mapping-file>META-INF/orm.xml</mapping-file>
        <class>foo.Attachment</class>
        <properties>
        ...
        </properties>
    </persistence-unit>
</persistence>

orm.xml (located in META-INF)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<entity-mappings xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/orm" 
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
      xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/orm 
      http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/orm_1_0.xsd" version="1.0">

    <persistence-unit-metadata>
        <persistence-unit-defaults>
            <schema>TEST</schema>
        </persistence-unit-defaults>
    </persistence-unit-metadata>

    <entity class="foo.Attachment" access="FIELD" >
        <attributes>
            <basic name="file">
                <!-- 
                     I'm using maven profiles to set the 'jpa.blob.definition' property.  I even tried changing the column name.
                 --> 
                <column nullable="true" name="ATTACHED_FILE_MODIFIED" column-definition="${jpa.blob.definition}" />
            </basic>
        </attributes>
    </entity>
</entity-mappings>

It IS interesting to note that if I change the entity class or basic name attribute in the orm.xml it complains that it's invalid/not found. So that tells me it is reading it but it's not overriding the annotation specified for file. Even the default schema isn't being used.

Isn't the orm.xml suppose to override the annotations? Shouldn't this be simple?

Answer 1

Figured out my issue. I didn't realize the project also had the same persistence unit name defined in a persistence.xml in the test/resources. So when I added

<mapping-file>META-INF/orm.xml</mapping-file>

to that persistence.xml file, it worked. So, yes, there does appear to be a bug with toplink as it should pick that up automatically but doesn't. I can't believe I didn't see that earlier. sigh...