How to map MySQL char (n) columns to instance variables using JPA / Hibernate annotations?

For the "language" column in the MySQL table of type char (7), I encountered a JPA / Hibernate mapping problem In my entity, the code generated for this field is:

private String language;

This causes the following exceptions at runtime:

... 43 more
Caused by: javax.persistence.PersistenceException: [PersistenceUnit: prosvetaPersistenceUnit] Unable to build EntityManagerFactory
    at org.hibernate.ejb.Ejb3Configuration.buildEntityManagerFactory(Ejb3Configuration.java:911)
    at org.hibernate.ejb.HibernatePersistence.createContainerEntityManagerFactory(HibernatePersistence.java:74)
    at org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerfactorybean.createNativeEntityManagerFactory(LocalContainerEntityManagerfactorybean.java:225)
    at org.springframework.orm.jpa.AbstractEntityManagerfactorybean.afterPropertiesSet(AbstractEntityManagerfactorybean.java:308)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapablebeanfactory.invokeInitMethods(AbstractAutowireCapablebeanfactory.java:1477)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapablebeanfactory.initializeBean(AbstractAutowireCapablebeanfactory.java:1417)
    ... 58 more
Caused by: org.hibernate.HibernateException: Wrong column type in joo16_dev.jos_categories for column language. Found: char,expected: varchar(255)
    at org.hibernate.mapping.Table.validateColumns(Table.java:283)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.validateSchema(Configuration.java:1313)
    at org.hibernate.tool.hbm2ddl.SchemaValidator.validate(SchemaValidator.java:139)
    at org.hibernate.impl.SessionFactoryImpl.<init>(SessionFactoryImpl.java:378)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.buildSessionFactory(Configuration.java:1842)
    at org.hibernate.ejb.Ejb3Configuration.buildEntityManagerFactory(Ejb3Configuration.java:902)
    ... 63 more

Thank you in advance!

J.P

Solution

Try this:

@Column(name="language",columnDeFinition="char(7)")

See if it works