Creating a mapping from a column in one table to a non-primary key column in another table produces incorrect mapping file missing a property-ref to the non-primary key. How to reproduce using Apache Derby: Create a database and connect to the database. jdbc:derby://localhost:1527/myDB;create=true;user=me;password=mine Create these tables in the myDB database, in the ME schema. create table vehicles ( make_id integer, model_id integer, name varchar(50), PRIMARY KEY (make_id, model_id) ); create table owners ( owner_id integer PRIMARY KEY, favorite_make_id integer, name varchar(20) ); – optional content insert into vehicles values (1, 10, 'Chevrolet Corvette'); insert into vehicles values (2, 11, 'Ford Focus'); insert into vehicles values (3, 12, 'Honda Accord'); insert into vehicles values (4, 13, 'Toyota Camry'); insert into owners values (50, 3, 'Jim'); insert into owners values (51, 1, 'Alex'); insert into owners values (52, 4, 'Sue'); insert into owners values (53, 1, 'Casey'); Create this Hibernate Configuration file. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE hibernate-configuration PUBLIC "-//Hibernate/Hibernate Configuration DTD 3.0//EN" "http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-configuration-3.0.dtd"> <hibernate-configuration> <session-factory> <property name="hibernate.connection.driver_class">org.apache.derby.jdbc.EmbeddedDriver</property> <property name="hibernate.connection.url">jdbc:derby://localhost:1527/myDB</property> <property name="hibernate.connection.username">me</property> <property name="hibernate.connection.password">mine</property> <property name="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.DerbyDialect</property> <property name="hibernate.current_session_context_class">thread</property> <property name="hibernate.default_schema">ME</property> <property name="hibernate.show_sql">true</property> </session-factory> </hibernate-configuration> Setup a Hibernate Console Configuration with the configuration above and connection to the Derby database. Create this Hibernate reverse engineering configuration <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE hibernate-reverse-engineering PUBLIC "-//Hibernate/Hibernate Reverse Engineering DTD 3.0//EN" "http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-reverse-engineering-3.0.dtd" > <hibernate-reverse-engineering> <table-filter match-name="OWNERS"/> <table-filter match-name="VEHICLES"/> <table name="VEHICLES"> <foreign-key foreign-table="OWNERS"> <column-ref local-column="MAKE_ID" foreign-column="FAVORITE_MAKE_ID" /> </foreign-key> </table> </hibernate-reverse-engineering> Setup a Hibernate Code Generation configuration like in the attached images. Running the Code Generation configuration will produce this Vehicles.hbm.xml mapping file. <?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE hibernate-mapping PUBLIC "-//Hibernate/Hibernate Mapping DTD 3.0//EN" "http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-mapping-3.0.dtd"> <hibernate-mapping> <class name="reveng.Vehicles" table="VEHICLES"> <composite-id name="id" class="reveng.VehiclesId"> <key-property name="makeId" type="int"> <column name="MAKE_ID" /> </key-property> <key-property name="modelId" type="int"> <column name="MODEL_ID" /> </key-property> </composite-id> <many-to-one name="owners" class="reveng.Owners" update="false" insert="false" fetch="select"> <column name="MAKE_ID" not-null="true" /> </many-to-one> <property name="name" type="string"> <column name="NAME" length="50" /> </property> </class> </hibernate-mapping> The many-to-one tag should have this additional attribute: property-ref="favoriteMakeId"