Add a boolean property to your entity beans to indicate the deleted state. This property can be on the entity bean or on a MappedSuperclass as per the example below:

This property must be a boolean type with a true value meaning that the row/bean has been logically deleted.

@MappedSuperclass
public class BaseSoftDelete {

  @Id
  Long id;

  @Version
  Long version;

  @SoftDelete
  boolean deleted;

Delete

A delete of an entity bean that has SoftDelete becomes a SQL update.

// delete becomes an update if the bean has soft delete property
database.delete(bean);

-- soft delete  ... sets deleted = true
update mybean set version=?, deleted=? where id=? and version=?; --bind(2,true,1,1,)

Delete Permanent

Delete permanent is used to perform a SQL delete (hard delete).

// delete becomes an update if the bean has soft delete property
database.deletePermanent(bean);

-- delete permanent
delete from mybean where id=? and version=?; --bind(1,2,)

Cascading behavior

A soft delete will cascade along the same relationships as a hard delete as long as the beans support soft delete. If the 'target' bean does not have a @SoftDelete property (and hence does not support soft delete) then the soft delete will not cascade to that relationship.

ManyToMany

Soft delete will not cascade to the intersection table of a @ManyToMany.

Draftable

Soft delete will not propagate to the associated "live" row of a @Draftable entity bean.

Query (normal)

A normal query automatically includes a predicate to filter out soft deleted rows. A predicate is added for each table (SQL FROM or JOIN) that has a soft delete column. This is done for any subsequent lazy loading queries as necessary.

and t0.deleted=false and t1.deleted=false ... additional predicates

select t0.id c0, t0.name ...
from ebasic_soft_delete t0
left outer join ebasic_sdchild t1 on t1.owner_id = t0.id
where t0.id = ?
  -- Additional predicates for soft delete
  and t0.deleted=false and t1.deleted=false
order by t0.id; --bind(1)

Query - includeSoftDeletes

A query can have includeSoftDeletes() set and in this case the soft delete predicates are not added to the query and this means all rows including soft deleted rows are included in the result.

Query.includeSoftDeletes()

// find a bean that could be soft deleted
List<MyBean> beans =
  database.find(MyBean.class)
  .includeSoftDeletes()
  .where().icontains("name", "rob")
  .findList();


// find a bean that could be soft deleted
MyBean bean =
  database.find(MyBean.class)
    .includeSoftDeletes()
    .setId(idValue)
    .findOne();

Notifications

For BeanPersistController, BeanPersistListener, L2 Cache and Cluster notifications a soft delete is treated the same as a hard delete and the same event notifications occur.

Change Log

For ChangeLog soft deletes are treated as updates as this reflects the actual change that occured.