Using reserved JPQL keywords with JPA

Question

I have an entity class called "Group" and NetBeans warns me "The entity table name is a reserved Java Persistence QL keyword".

A similar case would be the use of reserved SQL keywords.

Will this name be escaped? Would the use of a different table name solve the problem @Table(name="otherName"). Or should I rename the class?

Answer 1

Will this name be escaped?

There is nothing in the JPA spec that says so, if your provider does, this is provider specific.

Would the use of a different table name solve the problem @Table(name="otherName")

Obviously, it would (as long as you don't use another reserved keyword of course). But if you are using a JPA 2.0 provider, there is a standard way to get a db object name escaped, with double quotes:

@Table(name="\"Group\"")

In JPA 1.0, there is nothing standard, it depends on your JPA provider. For example, Hibernate uses backticks:

@Table(name="`Group`")

Or should I rename the class?

No. The table name of an entity defaults to the entity name but you can control it using the @Table annotation as we saw. There is thus no need to change the class name of your entity.

Answer 2

You don't have to rename the class - and you shouldn't - the name you have chosen reflects your domain in the best way, and you should not change it because of tool or framework limitations, in case the tool/framework provides a way to avoid the "clash". JPA provides such a way.