With Hibernate and according to http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/ias/toplink/jpa/howto/use-inheritance.html the @Inheritance annotation is not required on the inherited class.
A class is considered inherited if the superclass defines a JPA inheritance.

I've added a check to the direct parent, not sure about multiple levels of inheritance though.

Also a NPE has been fixed if a inherited class do not has a single property.

Index: ../ebean/src/com/avaje/ebean/server/deploy/InheritInfo.java
===================================================================
--- ../ebean/src/com/avaje/ebean/server/deploy/InheritInfo.java (revision 127)
+++ ../ebean/src/com/avaje/ebean/server/deploy/InheritInfo.java Sun Feb 15 10:39:31 CET 2009
@@ -120,7 +120,9 @@

for (int i = 0, x=children.size(); i < x; i++) {
InheritInfo childInfo = children.get(i);
+ if (childInfo.descriptor != null) {
- selectProps.add(childInfo.descriptor.propertiesLocal());
+ selectProps.add(childInfo.descriptor.propertiesLocal());
+ }

childInfo.addChildrenProperties(selectProps);
}
Index: ../ebean/src/com/avaje/ebean/server/deploy/parse/DeployInheritInfoBuilder.java
===================================================================
--- ../ebean/src/com/avaje/ebean/server/deploy/parse/DeployInheritInfoBuilder.java (revision 127)
+++ ../ebean/src/com/avaje/ebean/server/deploy/parse/DeployInheritInfoBuilder.java Sun Feb 15 10:43:57 CET 2009
@@ -190,6 +190,11 @@
if (a != null) {
return true;
}
+ // the @Inheritance annotation at the parent should be enough
+ a = cls.getSuperclass().getAnnotation(Inheritance.class);
+ if (a != null) {
+ return true;
+ }
return false;
}