title: ORM or something to handle SQL tables with an order column efficiently
body: <p>I got an Java application using SQL tables that contains an ordered list of entities, ordered by
  an order column. I would like to add/remove things in/from the middle
  of the list. Now, I'm wondering if some persistence framework / orm / you-name-it 
  could provide this kind of functionality with batch update of order
  column. </p>
  
  <p>At the basic case Hibernate (and probably others also) provide this
  functionality. 
  The problem is that the objects are handled one at time, which becomes
  problem when the list is large enough. Alternate solution would be to
  do the thing with a batch SQL update, like the following for example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>UPDATE table SET order_col = order_col + 1 WHERE order_col &gt; 47
  INSERT TO table VALUES ('new_id', 'new_description, ..., 47)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>which is done quite fast by the database engine but isn't supported. </p>
  
  <p>Now, I understand that this
  kind of batch updates don't fit so well when thinking the objects and their
  versioning, dirty checking etc.
  I'd still ask if somebody has some nice ideas or if some persistence
  framework / ORM / you-name-it would provide some help. 
  Of course I can do the thing with custom SQL/HQL/... but was wondering
  if there would be some solution already (I'd think somebody else could
  have done something like this before and even put it under open source). Also other good ideas related to the problem are welcome =)</p>