Martijn, Ray – Thanks. I'm 5 or 6 years into my Hibernate experience, and I can still remember the pain of starting out, so anything I can do to help others making the transition (both to Hibernate and really just OO domain models in general).

Mike – Avoiding bi-directional relationships is not a good goal. However, analyzing your business requirements to correctly select between one-directional and bi-directional relationships IS a good goal. You're not going to avoid all of them, but you will avoid some of them. With a RDBMS there is only bi-directional, so you don't think about the one-/bi- distinction, but with a memory model you have this extra flexibility.

It might be worthwhile to spell out specifically how this relates to ColdFusion ORM. I assume that you are hoping that your readers will infer from this that it is critically important to set both sides of a bi-directional relationship, as that is a logical conclusion from this discussion.

I fear, however, that some people may not infer that simple fact from this excellent explanation of _why_ this is so important. I'm certainly not advocating watering down your message, but, if you see fit, a final note explicitly referencing that rule (always set both sides of a bi-directional relationship) might enable more people to make use of this information.