Cayenne 101

[Joe Baldwin]

I have a few questions about best practices.   I have done some  
experimenting, have read what I could find, and have some questions  
about some elementary Cayenne usage concerning Add & Delete with a  
Parent-ChildList design.  (I have recently experienced some odd  
behavior that may be due to a fundamental misunderstanding of  
DataContext rules.)

Environment: I am using 3.0 M4 with MySQL and Tomcat JSP
DataContext:  I am getting the context using:  
DataContext.getThreadDataContext();
Example Design:
        E1 has a list of E2's
that is:
        E2 is a child of E1 and is a many-to-one relationship.
	The E1 relationship is called "E2List" and the reverse relationship  
on E2 is called "E1".

Questions:
1. When creating and associating E2 children is it more proper to do  
the following:

        DataContext dc = DataContext.getThreadDataContext();
        ** [get E1 via a  DataContext query]
        E2 e2 = new E2();
	e2.setE1(e1); // I **assume** this registers e2 with the Context &  
adds e2 to e1's list
        dc.commitChanges();

OR do you need to do as your example suggests:

        DataContext dc = DataContext.getThreadDataContext();
        E2 e2 = (E2) dc.newObject(E2.class);
        e2.setE1(e1);
        dc.commitChanges();

OR is there a better way?

2. Removal of a Child
Can you remove the child using:
        DataContext dc = DataContext.getThreadDataContext();
        dc.deleteObject(e2);
        dc.commitChangesToParent();
        dc.commitChanges();

or must you do it via the parent:
        DataContext dc = DataContext.getThreadDataContext();
        E1.getE2List().remove(e2);
        dc.commitChanges();

(Note: the second method seems to work better.)

Thanks,
Joe