JPA embeddable class constraints not used in embedding class table

Question

I have an issue with the DDL generated from an embeddable class. The annotations on the properties of the embeddable are not carried over to the embedding class table, such as NOT NULL.

@Entity
public class Contact {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.SEQUENCE, generator = "contact_id_seq")
    private Long id;

    @NotNull
    @Length(max = 63)
    private String fullName;

    @Length(max = 63)
    private String displayName;

    @Length(max = 63)
    private String emailAddress;

    @Embedded
    @NotNull
    private Meta meta;
}

@Embeddable
public class Meta {

    @NotNull
    private Instant created;

    @NotNull
    private Instant lastModified;

    @NotNull
    @Length(min = 1, max = 63)
    private String digest;
}

The generated DDL is like this:

CREATE TABLE public.contact (
    id bigint NOT NULL,
    full_name character varying(63) NOT NULL,
    display_name character varying(63),
    email_address character varying(63),
    created timestamp(6) with time zone,
    last_modified timestamp(6) with time zone,
    digest character varying(63),
);

How can I annotate my @Embeddable class so that the @NotNull constraints are preserved in the embedding class?

Answer 1

As it was rightly pointed out, I'm using two systems in combination, Jakarta Persistence API (JPA) and Jakarta Validator, both backed in my case by Hibernate implementations.

@NotNull is part of the Jakarta Validation API. According to the Jakarta Validator documentation, it is taken into account by JPA to apply NOT NULL to it's respective table column. It seems that this doesn't work with @Embedded classes using validation annotations. However, the JPA-native @Column(nullable = false) does work.

So the Meta class generates the expected DDL like so:

@Embeddable
public class Meta {

    @NotNull
    @Column(nullable = false)
    private Instant created;

    @NotNull
    @Column(nullable = false)
    private Instant lastModified;

    @NotNull
    @Size(min = 1, max = 63)
    @Column(nullable = false)
    private String digest;
}

Credit goes to @kidney for suggesting the solution!