I have a many to may relationship CohortGroup and Employee. Any time I insert an Employee into the CohortGroup hibernate deletes the group from the resolution table and inserts all the members again, plus the new one. Why not just add the new one?

The annotation in the Group:

@ManyToMany(cascade = { PERSIST, MERGE, REFRESH })
@JoinTable(name="MYSITE_RES_COHORT_GROUP_STAFF",
joinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="COHORT_GROUPID")},
inverseJoinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="USERID")})
public List<Employee> getMembers(){
  return members;
}

The other side in the Employee

@ManyToMany(mappedBy="members",cascade = { PERSIST, MERGE, REFRESH } )
public List<CohortGroup> getMemberGroups(){
  return memberGroups;
}

Code snipit

Employee emp = edao.findByID(cohortId);
CohortGroup group = cgdao.findByID(Long.decode(groupId));
group.getMembers().add(emp);
cgdao.persist(group);

below is the sql reported in the log

delete from swas.MYSITE_RES_COHORT_GROUP_STAFF where COHORT_GROUPID=?
insert into swas.MYSITE_RES_COHORT_GROUP_STAFF (COHORT_GROUPID, USERID) values (?, ?)
insert into swas.MYSITE_RES_COHORT_GROUP_STAFF (COHORT_GROUPID, USERID) values (?, ?)
insert into swas.MYSITE_RES_COHORT_GROUP_STAFF (COHORT_GROUPID, USERID) values (?, ?)
insert into swas.MYSITE_RES_COHORT_GROUP_STAFF (COHORT_GROUPID, USERID) values (?, ?)
insert into swas.MYSITE_RES_COHORT_GROUP_STAFF (COHORT_GROUPID, USERID) values (?, ?)
insert into swas.MYSITE_RES_COHORT_GROUP_STAFF (COHORT_GROUPID, USERID) values (?, ?)

This seams really inefficient and is causing some issues. If sevral requests are made to add an employee to the group then some get over written.