Looking for effecient way to store nested data with hibernate

I've been trying to find an efficient way to represent nested data i开发者_如何学Gon java/hibernate. My initial solution was a parent/child list with a self referencing join, but there are obvious pitfalls to this technique when building reports in SQL. I was looking into nested set and materialized path, but I was hoping there would be a way to represent nested data native to hibernate that is also efficient to query via SQL.

If you could have your nested data in the form of an inheritance hierarchy then you can have a look into the Inheritance Mapping Strategies of Hibernate. I've used them and if configured well then they are quite good.