The problem seem to be actually caused by the presence of the following line that instantiates the "foosPayees" collection in my Person.java class.
public class Person extends Claimant {
private Collection<Payee> foosPayees = new ArrayList<Payee>();
because the error message reads :
org.hibernate.MappingException: Could not determine type for: java.util.Collection, for columns: [org.hibernate.mapping.Column([b]foosPayees[/b])]
when I comment it out ,the error vanishes and my ear file deploys.
I realized that my superclass , Claimant also declared another reference to a Collection<Payee> .Newing the Collection in the superclass fixed the problem.
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