JPA provides the @MappedSuperclass annotation as a way of factoring out common properties into a generic superclass to inherit from. For example, you might decide that every entity should have a LastUpdatedBy property. You might then defined an AbstractPersistentObject superclass, with all your entities inheriting from this. The @MappedSuperclass annotation indicates that this superclass if for implementation inheritance (rather than type inheritance), and therefore should not have any table defined for it. Instead, the tables for every inheriting entity should have their own columns (eg last_updated_by); the inherited properties are "pushed down" into the subclasses.

If necessary, inherited mapping information may be overridden in the subclasses by using the @AttributeOverride and @AssociationOverride annotations.