Java persistence with hibernate concept 2 -- Entity type , Value type

We advocate a design with more classes than tables: One row represents multiple instances. Because database identity is implemented by primary key value, some persistent objects won’t have their own identity. In effect, the persistence mechanism implements pass-by-value semantics for some classes! One of the objects represented in the row has its own identity, and others depend on that. In
the previous example, the columns in the USERS table that contain address information are dependent on the identifier of the user, the primary key of the table. An instance of Address is dependent on an instance of User.

Hibernate makes the following essential distinction:
■ An object of entity type has its own database identity (primary key value). An object reference to an entity instance is persisted as a reference in the database (a foreign key value). An entity has its own lifecycle; it may exist independently of any other entity. Examples in CaveatEmptor are User,
Item, and Category.
■ An object of value type has no database identity; it belongs to an entity instance and its persistent state is embedded in the table row of the owning entity. Value types don’t have identifiers or identifier properties. The lifespan of a value type instance is bounded by the lifespan of the owning entity instance. A value type doesn’t support shared references: If two users live in the same apartment, they each have a reference to their own homeAddress instance. The most obvious value types are classes like Strings and Integers, but all JDK classes are considered value types. User-defined classes can also be mapped as value types; for example, CaveatEmptor has Address and MonetaryAmount.