2.11. Inheritance

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Although relational database systems don&#8217;t provide support for inheritance, Hibernate provides several strategies to leverage this object-oriented trait onto domain model entities:

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<dl>
<dt class="hdlist1">MappedSuperclass</dt>
<dd>

Inheritance is implemented in domain model only without reflecting it in the database schema. See [MappedSuperclass](#entity-inheritance-mapped-superclass).

</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">Single table</dt>
<dd>

The domain model class hierarchy is materialized into a single table which contains entities belonging to different class types. See [Single table](#entity-inheritance-single-table).

</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">Joined table</dt>
<dd>

The base class and all the subclasses have their own database tables and fetching a subclass entity requires a join with the parent table as well. See [Joined table](#entity-inheritance-joined-table).

</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">Table per class</dt>
<dd>

Each subclass has its own table containing both the subclass and the base class properties. See [Table per class](#entity-inheritance-table-per-class).

</dd>
</dl>
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