title: What's the difference between different mapping types in Hibernate?
body: <p>I'm a newbie in Database design and in Hibernate too. I started reading the documentation for Hibernate. It talked about "Collection Mapping", "Association Mapping" and "Component Mapping". I am not understanding the difference between them and not sure about when to use what in one-to-many/many-to-one/many-to-many relationships. To me, they all seem to do pretty much the same thing...</p>
  
  <p>Could you explain the <strong>differnces between "Collection Mapping", "Association Mapping" and "Component Mapping"</strong> as refered by the Hibernate doc? Examples of when is  the best to use which mapping would be appreciated. </p>
  
  <p>PS. I don't know if this is too general of a question to ask here. If you think it is, sorry for wasting your time. Any suggestions to a good general text or website would be good too.</p>
  
  <p>Thank you!!</p>