Error: "javax.persistence.JoinColumn.foreignKey()Ljavax/persistence/ForeignKey" I was trying to implement Hibernate Search functionality on my current project. I faced the above issue and resolved it with some research. Root cause and Solution: JoinColumn.foreignKey() was introduced with JPA 2.1, which was not implemented by Hibernate 4 until version 4.3. If you're using an older version of Hibernate 4, you will face this issue. Try to upgrade it to hibernate-jpa-2.1-api and also Hibernate to 4.3.x. If you're already using Hibernate 4.3 then make sure you're also using hibernate-jpa-2.1-api to make sure the API and implementation match up.
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