Hi Brian. Sorry for the lack of clarity there, it was late in my part of the world. This is my understanding of it in general, but I am sure someone can correct how it relates to xwiki along the way. Hibernate hides the process of creating objects and populating them with data retrieved from the database. The Java objects have an almost direct relationship to the database structure. The tables are represented by classes and the columns are represented by properties of the object. So when an object is created, it already fully represents the table structure. This gives you the advantage of being able to describe the equivalent of SQL queries very simply by referring to their properties. There are getters and setter for the properties so to select a particular item from the database all you have to do is "get" that property with the value you want. Example: Instead of "SELECT * FROM foo WHERE id = '22'" you could just use something like ... item = getSession().get(foo.id, '22'); This is the beautiful bit about it. "item" is now an object with all the data from that row of the table and you can adjust the properties with the setter methods. Example: Instead of "UPDATE foo SET Name='New Name', Age='36' WHERE id='22'" item.setName("New Name"); item.setAge("36"); getSession().update(item); Note: When you want to update the database you just call method (eg update(item)) and your object returns all the current object properties to the appropriate row in the database. So how does this relate to XWiki? The mapping of xwiki object to the MySQL database is in xwiki.hbm.xml. Using the hibernate query from the category field in the blog as an example. Example: select prop.value from BaseObject as obj, StringProperty as prop where obj.className='Blog.Categories' and prop.id.id = obj.id and prop.id.name='name' From looking at the mapping I can see that "BaseObject" is of the class "com.xpn.xwiki.objects.BaseObject" and it is mapped to the table "xwikiobjects" in the database. It is then aliased to "obj". I can also see that the property "className" of "obj" is mapped to "XWO_CLASSNAME", "name" is mapped to "XWO_NAME" and "id" is mapped to "XWO_ID". "StringProperty" is a joined subclass (hibernate returns all the subclasses automatically) and is mapped to "com.xpn.xwiki.objects.StringProperty" which relates to the table "xwikistrings". In that subclass "value" is mapped to "XWS_VALUE". StringProperty is then aliased as prop. So after all that, what we are trying to say is something to the effect of "give me a list object that is made up of the names of the categories". Why do we have to do it like that? Because the data is described generically in the database schema and stored in 3 different places. To retrieve it you need to ask first to find the objects of the wiki defined class 'Blog.Categories' then you need to retrieve the properties related to those objects (in this case, only the strings) and then you want to list the values of those strings. So the strength of XWiki is that you can create classes, instances of those classes and manipulate them through the wiki pages to represent almost anything. It also means that it is very independent of the backend (as shown by using HQSQL in the standalone version). However, the drawback is that you need to understand clearly how your classes are put together because the data is spread across the database (Remember, your classes/objects that you have created are represented in the database by the generic BaseObject and its properties). Getting back to using this info. I find mostly that the $xwiki, $request and $doc objects give you access via the api to most of what you need anyway without getting that deep into it. Example: From the mapping file I can see that the string property "fullName" in class com.xpn.xwiki.doc.XWikiDocument (eg $doc or doc) relates to "XWD_FULLNAME" in the "xwikidoc" table. So if I wanted to list all the different webspaces in my xwiki with the default page of "WebHome" I know that "doc" represents the "xwikidoc" table and "fullName" represents "XWD_FULLNAME" so I write the "where" part of the query as "doc.fullName like '%.WebHome'" The searchDocuments method of $xwiki translates this as "select distinct doc.web, doc.name from com.xpn.xwiki.doc.XWikiDocument as doc where fullName like '%.WebHome'" So you end up with a list as demonstrated below in a Velocity setting. #set($whereclause = "doc.fullName like '%.WebHome'") #set($mylist = $xwiki.searchDocuments($whereclause)) 1.1 The list returned \\$mylist 1.1 Individual items #foreach ($item in $mylist) #set($thisdoc = $xwiki.getDocument($item)) * $thisdoc.getFullName() #end Hope that wasn't too wandering and full of mistakes. It is just from poking around a bit inside so could be completely misguided. I look forward to comments. Cheers, Mark On 25 Mar 2006, at 2:30 AM, THOMAS, BRIAN M ((SBCSI)) wrote: