Maybe it's just me but I would design the db first and the object layer second - that way external tools (sql, report builders, etc) do not have to filter through your mapping.

So for your example, I would modify example 1 ... but add a third table called Person and pull the person data out of Death and Wedding: 

    Table:Death     Table:Wedding          Table::Person
    -----------     -------------          -------------
    death_id        wedding_id             person_id
    person_id       groom_id               firstname
    short_obit      bride_id               surname
    obituary        message_from_couple
    flowers         details           
    charities       date_of_wedding
    date_of_death

[download]
Where groom_id and bride_id are foreign keys into Table:Person

-derby

In reply to Re: Mapping objects to database tables by derby
in thread Mapping objects to database tables by clinton

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.