Unexpected ClassCastException when using Java 17 with Hibernate's Single Table Inheritance
I'm having trouble with I've searched everywhere and can't find a clear answer. I'm deploying to production and I'm wondering if anyone has experience with I'm working with a `ClassCastException` when trying to load entities using Hibernate with single table inheritance in my Java 17 application... My entity structure consists of a base class `Animal` and two subclasses, `Dog` and `Cat`. The base class is annotated with `@MappedSuperclass`, while the subclasses use `@Entity` with appropriate table settings. Here's a simplified version of my code: ```java import javax.persistence.*; @MappedSuperclass public abstract class Animal { @Id @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY) private Long id; private String name; // getters and setters } @Entity @Inheritance(strategy = InheritanceType.SINGLE_TABLE) @DiscriminatorColumn(name = "animal_type") public class Dog extends Animal { private String breed; // getters and setters } @Entity public class Cat extends Animal { private boolean isIndoor; // getters and setters } ``` When I query the `Animal` base class, I get the following stack trace: ``` Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ClassCastException: class com.example.Cat want to be cast to class com.example.Dog ``` This happens when I try to cast the result of my query: ```java List<Animal> animals = entityManager.createQuery("SELECT a FROM Animal a", Animal.class).getResultList(); for (Animal animal : animals) { Dog dog = (Dog) animal; // This line throws ClassCastException } ``` I've verified that the database table indeed contains both `Dog` and `Cat` entries, and I'm using Hibernate 5.6 along with Spring Boot 2.5. I suspect this might be related to how Hibernate handles the entity types during polymorphic queries, but I need to seem to find a solution. Is there a way to safely handle this casting, or is there a better approach to retrieve these entities without running into `ClassCastException`? I'm working on a service that needs to handle this. What am I doing wrong? I've been using Java for about a year now. The project is a desktop app built with Java. Thanks in advance! Any ideas how to fix this? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.