I’m working on a Spring Boot application where I need to handle a polymorphic association between a ‘Session’ entity and two types of users: ‘User’ and ‘VirtualUser’. Both User and VirtualUser inherit from an abstract class UserRepresentation. I am using Hibernate for ORM, Jackson for JSON serialization, and Lombok for boilerplate code reduction.

Here are my entity classes:

UserRepresentation (abstract class):

@Getter
@Setter
@NoArgsConstructor
@AllArgsConstructor
@MappedSuperclass
@Audited
public abstract class UserRepresentation {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Long id;
    private String firstName;
    private String lastName;
}

User Entity:

@Entity
@Audited
@Table(name = "user")
@Getter
@Setter
@NoArgsConstructor
@AllArgsConstructor
@JsonTypeName("user")
public class User extends UserRepresentation {
    private String username;
    private String email;
    // Other fields and methods
}

VirtualUser Entity:

@Entity
@Audited
@Table(name = "virtual_user")
@Getter
@Setter
@NoArgsConstructor
@AllArgsConstructor
@JsonTypeName("virtualUser")
public class VirtualUser extends UserRepresentation {
    private String virtualId;
    private String details;
    // Other fields and methods
}

Session Entity:

@Entity
@Audited
@Getter
@Setter
@NoArgsConstructor
@AllArgsConstructor
public class Session {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Long id;

    @ManyToOne
    @JoinColumn(name = "driver_id")
    @JsonTypeInfo(use = JsonTypeInfo.Id.NAME, include = JsonTypeInfo.As.PROPERTY, property = "@class")
    @JsonSubTypes({
        @JsonSubTypes.Type(value = User.class, name = "user"),
        @JsonSubTypes.Type(value = VirtualUser.class, name = "virtualUser")
    })
    private UserRepresentation driver;

    // Other fields and methods
}

Error:
When trying to run the application, I encounter the following error:

Error creating bean with name 'entityManagerFactory' defined in class path resource [org/springframework/boot/autoconfigure/orm/jpa/HibernateJpaConfiguration.class]: Association 'com.tgrwrt.customer.motorsport.operationmanagement.models.operations.Session.driver' targets an unknown entity named 'com.tgrwrt.customer.motorsport.operationmanagement.models.identity.UserRepresentation'

1. How can I properly configure Hibernate to recognize the polymorphic relationship between Session and the UserRepresentation subclasses?

2. How can I ensure that Jackson correctly serializes and deserializes the driver property in Session?

3. Are there any additional configurations or annotations required to handle this scenario in Spring Boot with Hibernate and Jackson?

4. How can I verify the correct serialization and deserialization of polymorphic types using Jackson?