[eclipselink-users] JPQL does not do cascading delete

[Warren Tang <warren.c.tang@xxxxxxxxx>]

I'm using JPA2.0 and EclipseLink 2.3. Same results on Oracle 11g and MySQL 5.1.

Below are at the bottom. An exam paper (ExamPaper) contains many questions(Question); each question has four options (QuestionOption).

I want to delete all ExamPapers and their related questions and options. However I found that JPQL's delete statement does not do cascading deletion, even I've already set cascade=ALL and orphanRemoval=true.

While EntityManager.remove does do cascading deletion.But I don't think it's a good idea to delete one by one.

Am I missing something? How can I delete records with cascade on?


--------------- ExamPaperDao.java ----------------------
  public void clearExamPapers() {
    int count = 0;
    EntityManager em = createEntityManager();
    try {
      EntityTransaction tx = em.getTransaction();
      try {
        Query query = em.createQuery("delete from ExamPaper");
        tx.begin();
        count = query.executeUpdate();
        tx.commit();
      } finally {
        if(tx.isActive()) tx.rollback();
      }
    } finally {
      em.close();
    }
    log.trace("ExamPapers cleared: [count={}]", count);
  }

---------------- Entities ------------------------------
@Entity
public class ExamPaper {
  @Id @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
  private Long id;
  private String name;
  @OneToMany(fetch = FetchType.EAGER, orphanRemoval = true, cascade = {CascadeType.ALL})
  List<Question> questions;

  ... constructors, getters and setters, equals and hashCode excluding id
}

@Entity
public class Question {
 
  @Id @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
  private Long id;
  private String serial;
  private String title;
  @OneToMany(fetch = FetchType.EAGER, orphanRemoval = true, cascade = CascadeType.ALL)
  @JoinColumn(name = "question_id")
  //@OrderBy()
  private List<QuestionOption> options;

  ... constructors, getters and setters, equals and hashCode excluding id
}

@Entity
public class QuestionOption {
  public enum OptionLabel { A, B, C, D }
 
  @Id @GeneratedValue(strategy =GenerationType.IDENTITY)
  private Long id;
  @Enumerated(EnumType.STRING)
  private OptionLabel label;
  private String text;
  private Boolean checked;

  ... constructors, getters and setters, equals and hashCode excluding id
}

-- ------------
Regards,
Warren Tang