NullPointerException in OC4J TP4 persistence unit predeployment

Question

Hi,
I have an ee5 application that I've been developing on jboss/hibernate, and I'm now trying to deploy it to oc4j/toplink. When I deploy it to oc4j, the deployment fails with this stacktrace:
oracle.oc4j.persistence.PersistenceException: [eTimesheet-ear:C:\oc4j\oc4j-11.1.1.0.0_tp4\j2ee\home\applications\eTimesheet-ear\eTimesheet-ejb.jar] - Exception creating EntityManagerFactory using PersistenceProvider class oracle.toplink.PersistenceProvider for persistence unit eTimesheet.
     at oracle.oc4j.persistence.PersistenceException.exceptionCreatingEntityManagerFactory(PersistenceException.java:113)
     at oracle.oc4j.persistence.PersistenceUnitManagerImpl.createContainerEntityManagerFactory(PersistenceUnitManagerImpl.java:178)
     at oracle.oc4j.persistence.PersistenceUnitManagerImpl.createPersistenceUnit(PersistenceUnitManagerImpl.java:140)
     at oracle.oc4j.persistence.PersistenceUnitManagerImpl.initialize(PersistenceUnitManagerImpl.java:80)
     at oracle.oc4j.persistence.ServerPersistenceUnitManagerImpl.initialize(ServerPersistenceUnitManagerImpl.java:17)
     at com.evermind.server.ejb.EJBPackageDeployment.initializePersistenceUnitManager(EJBPackageDeployment.java:1010)
     at com.evermind.server.ejb.EJBPackageDeployment.preLoadClasses(EJBPackageDeployment.java:1004)
     at com.evermind.server.ejb.EJBContainer.postInit(EJBContainer.java:441)
     at com.evermind.server.ApplicationStateRunning.initializeApplication(ApplicationStateRunning.java:262)
     at com.evermind.server.Application.setConfig(Application.java:538)
     at com.evermind.server.Application.setConfig(Application.java:433)
     at com.evermind.server.ApplicationServer.addApplication(ApplicationServer.java:2125)
     at oracle.oc4j.admin.internal.ApplicationDeployer.addApplication(ApplicationDeployer.java:554)
     at oracle.oc4j.admin.internal.ApplicationDeployer.doDeploy(ApplicationDeployer.java:210)
     at oracle.oc4j.admin.internal.DeployerBase.execute(DeployerBase.java:99)
     at oracle.oc4j.admin.jmx.server.mbeans.deploy.OC4JDeployerRunnable.doRun(OC4JDeployerRunnable.java:52)
     at oracle.oc4j.admin.jmx.server.mbeans.deploy.DeployerRunnable.run(DeployerRunnable.java:82)
     at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:885)
     at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:907)
     at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)
Caused by: javax.persistence.PersistenceException: Exception [TOPLINK-28018] (Oracle TopLink - 11g Technology Preview 4 (11.1.1.0.0) (Build 080418)): oracle.toplink.exceptions.EntityManagerSetupException
Exception Description: Predeployment of PersistenceUnit [eTimesheet] failed.
Internal Exception: java.lang.NullPointerException
     at oracle.toplink.internal.ejb.cmp3.EntityManagerSetupImpl.predeploy(EntityManagerSetupImpl.java:790)
     at oracle.toplink.PersistenceProvider.createContainerEntityManagerFactory(PersistenceProvider.java:146)
     at oracle.oc4j.persistence.PersistenceUnitManagerImpl.createContainerEntityManagerFactory(PersistenceUnitManagerImpl.java:173)
     ... 18 more
Caused by: Exception [TOPLINK-28018] (Oracle TopLink - 11g Technology Preview 4 (11.1.1.0.0) (Build 080418)): oracle.toplink.exceptions.EntityManagerSetupException
Exception Description: Predeployment of PersistenceUnit [eTimesheet] failed.
Internal Exception: java.lang.NullPointerException
     at oracle.toplink.exceptions.EntityManagerSetupException.predeployFailed(EntityManagerSetupException.java:198)
     ... 21 more
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
     at oracle.toplink.internal.ejb.cmp3.metadata.accessors.EmbeddedIdAccessor.processEmbeddableClass(EmbeddedIdAccessor.java:115)
     at oracle.toplink.internal.ejb.cmp3.metadata.accessors.EmbeddedAccessor.process(EmbeddedAccessor.java:259)
     at oracle.toplink.internal.ejb.cmp3.metadata.accessors.EmbeddedIdAccessor.process(EmbeddedIdAccessor.java:69)
     at oracle.toplink.internal.ejb.cmp3.metadata.accessors.ClassAccessor.processAccessor(ClassAccessor.java:570)
     at oracle.toplink.internal.ejb.cmp3.metadata.accessors.ClassAccessor.processAccessorFields(ClassAccessor.java:583)
     at oracle.toplink.internal.ejb.cmp3.metadata.accessors.ClassAccessor.processAccessors(ClassAccessor.java:609)
     at oracle.toplink.internal.ejb.cmp3.metadata.accessors.ClassAccessor.process(ClassAccessor.java:510)
     at oracle.toplink.internal.ejb.cmp3.metadata.MetadataProcessor.processAnnotations(MetadataProcessor.java:279)
     at oracle.toplink.internal.ejb.cmp3.persistence.PersistenceUnitProcessor.processORMetadata(PersistenceUnitProcessor.java:266)
     at oracle.toplink.internal.ejb.cmp3.EntityManagerSetupImpl.predeploy(EntityManagerSetupImpl.java:747)
     ... 20 more
I probably shouldn't jump to conclusions, but since this is a nullpointer exception and my code runs ok on hibernate, I suspect this is a bug in toplink.
Thoughts?

Answer 1

I turned on FINEST logging, and it appears that this exception is thrown when processing the following class (trimmed irrelevant parts):
@Entity
@Table(name = "PS_HRLY_APPRVR_VW")
@NamedQueries({ ... })
public class ApproverAssignment implements Serializable
@Embeddable
public static class ApproverAssignmentPK implements Serializable
@Embedded
@AttributeOverride(name = "employeeId", column =
@Column(name = "emplid", updatable = false))
private EmployeeId workerId;
@Embedded
@AttributeOverride(name = "employeeId", column =
@Column(name = "supervisor_id", updatable = false))
private EmployeeId approverId;
@Override
public int hashCode()
@Override
public boolean equals(Object obj)
@EmbeddedId
private ApproverAssignmentPK approverAssignmentPK = new ApproverAssignmentPK();
...getters/setters
Also, here's the source code for EmployeeId:
@Embeddable
public class EmployeeId implements Serializable
private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
@Length(max=10, min=9)
private String employeeId;
//for JPA
protected EmployeeId()
protected EmployeeId(String employeeId)
this.employeeId = employeeId;
public String getEmployeeId()
return employeeId;
@Override
public int hashCode()
@Override
public boolean equals(Object obj)
@ConstructsFromString
public static EmployeeId valueOf(String employeeId)
Preconditions.checkNotNull(employeeId, "employeeId is null");
return new EmployeeId(employeeId);
Maybe toplink doesn't like nested @Embeddables? I thought they were legal, but maybe I'm wrong.
Thanks