Spring Boot + JPA : Column name annotation ignored

Question

I have a Spring Boot application with dependency spring-boot-starter-data-jpa. My entity class has a column annotation with a column name. For example:

@Column(name="TestName")
private String testName;

Despite this, SQL generates test_name as the column's name. After looking for a solution I have found that setting spring.jpa.hibernate.naming_strategy=org.hibernate.cfg.EJB3NamingStrategy solves the problem (the column name is taken from the column annotation).

Still, my question is: why without naming_strategy set to EJB3NamingStrategy is JPA ignoring the column annotation? Maybe the hibernate dialect has something to do with it? I'm connecting to MS SQL 2014 Express and my logs contain:

Unknown Microsoft SQL Server major version [12] using SQL Server 2000 dialect
Using dialect: org.hibernate.dialect.SQLServerDialect 

Answer 1

LATEST SOLUTION 2025

Try to use it like this and I guarantee you that this will work. Add this in the application.properties:

spring.jpa.hibernate.naming.physical-strategy=org.hibernate.boot.model.naming.PhysicalNamingStrategyStandardImpl

 @Column(name = "\"resellerName\"")
    private String resellerName;

By adding that line, you are sending the name of table in quotes, as if you don't send that in quotes, then the SQL server by default will convert it to lowerCase and replace space with _.

Answer 2

Make the necessary configuration updates to use the dialect that corresponds to your SQL Server version: spring.jpa.properties.hibernate.dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.SQLServer2012Dialect

Answer 3

I had a similar issue, caused by the ID classes. The ID classes die not have the column annotation. For one out of the three classes it was an issue. I could not find out why the other ID classes dit translate to correct values.

Answer 4

Using maven 3.8.3, I found funny case where the column name of the table is following the get/set method naming. Even when I added a new field in the entity, it didn't create a new column in the table if I didn't specify the get/set method.

But, if I remove all get/set methods from the entity class, the naming of columns in the table follows the naming of fields in the entity class.

(I'm a rookie, it might be a feature which ensures logical correctness :)

Answer 5

For Hibernate 5, I solved this issue by adding the following lines in my application.properties file:

spring.jpa.hibernate.naming.implicit-strategy=org.hibernate.boot.model.naming.ImplicitNamingStrategyLegacyJpaImpl
spring.jpa.hibernate.naming.physical-strategy=org.hibernate.boot.model.naming.PhysicalNamingStrategyStandardImpl

Answer 6

I also tried all the above and nothing works. I got field called "gunName" in DB and i couldn't handle this, till i used example below:

@Column(name="\"gunName\"")
public String gunName;

with properties:

spring.jpa.hibernate.naming.implicit-strategy=org.hibernate.boot.model.naming.ImplicitNamingStrategyLegacyJpaImpl
spring.jpa.hibernate.naming.physical-strategy=org.hibernate.boot.model.naming.PhysicalNamingStrategyStandardImpl

also see this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/35708531

Answer 7

you have to follow some naming strategy when you work with spring jpa. The column name should be in lowercase or uppercase.

@Column(name="TESTNAME")
private String testName;

or

@Column(name="testname")
private String testName;

keep in mind that, if you have your column name "test_name" format in the database then you have to follow the following way

@Column(name="TestName")
private String testName;

or

@Column(name="TEST_NAME")
private String testName;

or

@Column(name="test_name")
private String testName;

Answer 8

I tried all the above and it didn't work. This worked for me:

@Column(name="TestName")
public String getTestName(){//.........

Annotate the getter instead of the variable

Answer 9

Turns out that I just have to convert @column name testName to all small letters, since it was initially in camel case.

Although I was not able to use the official answer, the question was able to help me solve my problem by letting me know what to investigate.

Change:

@Column(name="testName")
private String testName;

To:

@Column(name="testname")
private String testName;

Answer 10

In my case, the annotation was on the getter() method instead of the field itself (ported from a legacy application).

Spring ignores the annotation in this case as well but doesn't complain. The solution was to move it to the field instead of the getter.

Answer 11

If you want to use @Column(...), then use small-case letters always even though your actual DB column is in camel-case.

Example: If your actual DB column name is TestName then use:

  @Column(name="testname") //all small-case

If you don't like that, then simply change the actual DB column name into: test_name

Answer 12

The default strategy for @Column(name="TestName") will be test_name, this is correct behavior!

If you have a column named TestName in your database you should change Column annotation to @Column(name="testname").

This works because database does not care if you name your column TestName or testname (column names are case insensitive!!).

But beware, the same does not apply for database name and table names, that are case sensitive on Unix systems but case in sensitive on Windows systems (the fact that probably kept a lot of people awake at night, working on windows but deploying on linux :))

Answer 13

The only solution that worked for me was the one posted by teteArg above. I'm on Spring Boot 1.4.2 w/Hibernate 5. Namely

spring.jpa.hibernate.naming.implicit-strategy=org.hibernate.boot.model.naming.ImplicitNamingStrategyLegacyJpaImpl
spring.jpa.hibernate.naming.physical-strategy=org.hibernate.boot.model.naming.PhysicalNamingStrategyStandardImpl

For additional insight I'm posting the call trace so that its clear what calls Spring is making into Hibernate to setup the naming strategy.

      at org.hibernate.boot.model.naming.PhysicalNamingStrategyStandardImpl.toPhysicalColumnName(PhysicalNamingStrategyStandardImpl.java:46)
  at org.hibernate.cfg.Ejb3Column.redefineColumnName(Ejb3Column.java:309)
  at org.hibernate.cfg.Ejb3Column.initMappingColumn(Ejb3Column.java:234)
  at org.hibernate.cfg.Ejb3Column.bind(Ejb3Column.java:206)
  at org.hibernate.cfg.Ejb3DiscriminatorColumn.buildDiscriminatorColumn(Ejb3DiscriminatorColumn.java:82)
  at org.hibernate.cfg.AnnotationBinder.processSingleTableDiscriminatorProperties(AnnotationBinder.java:797)
  at org.hibernate.cfg.AnnotationBinder.bindClass(AnnotationBinder.java:561)
  at org.hibernate.boot.model.source.internal.annotations.AnnotationMetadataSourceProcessorImpl.processEntityHierarchies(AnnotationMetadataSourceProcessorImpl.java:245)
  at org.hibernate.boot.model.process.spi.MetadataBuildingProcess$1.processEntityHierarchies(MetadataBuildingProcess.java:222)
  at org.hibernate.boot.model.process.spi.MetadataBuildingProcess.complete(MetadataBuildingProcess.java:265)
  at org.hibernate.jpa.boot.internal.EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.metadata(EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.java:847)
  at org.hibernate.jpa.boot.internal.EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.build(EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.java:874)
  at org.springframework.orm.jpa.vendor.SpringHibernateJpaPersistenceProvider.createContainerEntityManagerFactory(SpringHibernateJpaPersistenceProvider.java:60)
  at org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean.createNativeEntityManagerFactory(LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean.java:353)
  at org.springframework.orm.jpa.AbstractEntityManagerFactoryBean.buildNativeEntityManagerFactory(AbstractEntityManagerFactoryBean.java:373)
  at org.springframework.orm.jpa.AbstractEntityManagerFactoryBean.afterPropertiesSet(AbstractEntityManagerFactoryBean.java:362)
  at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.invokeInitMethods(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1642)
  at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.initializeBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1579)
  at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.doCreateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:553)
  at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:482)
  at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory$1.getObject(AbstractBeanFactory.java:306)
  at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.getSingleton(DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.java:230)
  - locked <0x1687> (a java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap)
  at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.doGetBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:302)
  at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.getBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:197)
  at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.getBean(AbstractApplicationContext.java:1081)
  at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.finishBeanFactoryInitialization(AbstractApplicationContext.java:856)
  at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:542)
  - locked <0x1688> (a java.lang.Object)
  at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.refresh(SpringApplication.java:761)
  at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.refreshContext(SpringApplication.java:371)
  at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.run(SpringApplication.java:315)
  at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.run(SpringApplication.java:1186)
  at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.run(SpringApplication.java:1175)

Answer 14

teteArg, thank you so much. Just an added information so, everyone bumping into this question will be able to understand why.

What teteArg said is indicated on the Spring Boot Common Properties: http://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/html/common-application-properties.html

Apparently, spring.jpa.hibernate.naming.strategy is not a supported property for Spring JPA implementation using Hibernate 5.

Answer 15

It seems that

@Column(name="..")

is completely ignored unless there is

spring.jpa.hibernate.naming_strategy=org.hibernate.cfg.EJB3NamingStrategy

specified, so to me this is a bug.

I spent a few hours trying to figure out why @Column(name="..") was ignored.

Answer 16

By default Spring uses org.springframework.boot.orm.jpa.SpringNamingStrategy to generate table names. This is a very thin extension of org.hibernate.cfg.ImprovedNamingStrategy. The tableName method in that class is passed a source String value but it is unaware if it comes from a @Column.name attribute or if it has been implicitly generated from the field name.

The ImprovedNamingStrategy will convert CamelCase to SNAKE_CASE where as the EJB3NamingStrategy just uses the table name unchanged.

If you don't want to change the naming strategy you could always just specify your column name in lowercase:

@Column(name="testname")