"Embedded" objects

[Linus Kamb]

Apologies if this has been covered before, or is somewhere in the documentation that I have not yet found.  I've searched the list and the docs and have not yet found what I'm looking for.  But I'm under a bit of time pressure, so perhaps haven't been as thorough as I could be.

Is it possible to "flatten" "embedded" objects into the containing object's db table?

For instance, if I have class with various basic fields and then one or more fields that are objects which themselves contain basic fields, I would like to be able to automatically (and simply) persist the fields of the child objects into the parent object's db table.

I guess this is the old "object-relational mismatch" problem.

Can this be done simply?

Could it be done with a custom persister?  (Seems like those are only for singular values.)

Does it require a custom DAO?  And if so, could I subclass the BaseDao and only override a few methods?

thanks so much,

Linus