An object (entity instance) is either transient or persistent with respect to a particular Session. Newly instantiated objects are, of course, transient. The session offers services for saving (ie. persisting) transient instances: The single-argument save() generates and assigns a unique identifier to fritz. The two-argument form attempts to persist pk using the given identifier. We generally discourage the use of the two-argument form since it may be used to create primary keys with business meaning. It is most useful in certain special situations like using Hibernate to persist a BMP entity bean. Associated objects may be made persistent in any order you like unless you have a NOT NULL constraint upon a foreign key column. There is never a risk of violating foreign key constraints. However, you might violate a NOT NULL constraint if you save() the objects in the wrong order. The load() methods of Session give you a way to retrieve a persistent instance if you already know its identifier. One version takes a class object and will load the state into a newly instantiated object. The second version allows you to supply an instance into which the state will be loaded. The form which takes an instance is particularly useful if you plan to use Hibernate with BMP entity beans and is provided for exactly that purpose. You may discover other uses. (DIY instance pooling etc.) Note that load() will throw an unrecoverable exception if there is no matching database row. If the class is mapped with a proxy, load() returns an object that is an uninitialized proxy and does not actually hit the database until you invoke a method of the object. This behaviour is very useful if you wish to create an association to an object without actually loading it from the database. If you are not certain that a matching row exists, you should use the get() method, which hits the database immediately and returns null if there is no matching row. You may also load an objects using an SQL SELECT ... FOR UPDATE. See the next section for a discussion of Hibernate LockModes. Note that any associated instances or contained collections are not selected FOR UPDATE. It is possible to re-load an object and all its collections at any time, using the refresh() method. This is useful when database triggers are used to initialize some of the properties of the object. If you don't know the identifier(s) of the object(s) you are looking for, use the find() methods of Session. Hibernate supports a simple but powerful object oriented query language. fish.deceased or fish.birthday is null" );]]> The second argument to find() accepts an object or array of objects. The third argument accepts a Hibernate type or array of Hibernate types. These given types are used to bind the given objects to the ? query placeholders (which map to IN parameters of a JDBC PreparedStatement). Just as in JDBC, you should use this binding mechanism in preference to string manipulation. The Hibernate class defines a number of static methods and constants, providing access to most of the built-in types, as instances of net.sf.hibernate.type.Type. If you expect your query to return a very large number of objects, but you don't expect to use them all, you might get better performance from the iterate() methods, which return a java.util.Iterator. The iterator will load objects on demand, using the identifiers returned by an initial SQL query (n+1 selects total). Unfortunately java.util.Iterator does not declare any exceptions, so any SQL or Hibernate exceptions that occur are wrapped in a LazyInitializationException (a subclass of RuntimeException). The iterate() method also performs better if you expect that many of the objects are already loaded and cached by the session, or if the query results contain the same objects many times. (When no data is cached or repeated, find() is almost always faster.) Heres an example of a query that should be called using iterate(): Calling the previous query using find() would return a very large JDBC ResultSet containing the same data many times. Hibernate queries sometimes return tuples of objects, in which case each tuple is returned as an array: Queries may specify a property of a class in the select clause. They may even call SQL aggregate functions. Properties or aggregates are considered "scalar" results. If you need to specify bounds upon your result set (the maximum number of rows you want to retrieve and / or the first row you want to retrieve) you should obtain an instance of net.sf.hibernate.Query: You may even define a named query in the mapping document. (Remember to use a CDATA section if your query contains characters that could be interpreted as markup.) ? ] ]>]]> The query interface supports the use of named parameters. Named parameters are identifiers of the form :name in the query string. There are methods on Query for binding values to named parameters or JDBC-style ? parameters. Contrary to JDBC, Hibernate numbers parameters from zero. The advantages of named parameters are: named parameters are insensitive to the order they occur in the query string they may occur multiple times in the same query they are self-documenting If your JDBC driver supports scrollable ResultSets, the Query interface may be used to obtain a ScrollableResults which allows more flexible navigation of the query results. i++ ) && cats.next() ) pageOfCats.add( cats.get(1) ); }]]> The behaviour of scroll() is similar to iterate(), except that objects may be initialized selectively by get(int), instead of an entire row being initialized at once. A collection filter is a special type of query that may be applied to a persistent collection or array. The query string may refer to this, meaning the current collection element. The returned collection is considered a bag. Observe that filters do not require a from clause (though they may have one if required). Filters are not limited to returning the collection elements themselves. HQL is extremely powerful but some people prefer to build queries dynamically, using an object oriented API, rather than embedding strings in their Java code. For these people, Hibernate provides an intuitive Criteria query API. If you are uncomfortable with SQL-like syntax, this is perhaps the easiest way to get started with Hibernate. This API is also more extensible than HQL. Applications might provide their own implementations of the Criterion interface. You may express a query in SQL, using createSQLQuery(). You must enclose SQL aliases in braces. SQL queries may contain named and positional parameters, just like Hibernate queries. Transactional persistent instances (ie. objects loaded, saved, created or queried by the Session) may be manipulated by the application and any changes to persistent state will be persisted when the Session is flushed (discussed later in this chapter). So the most straightforward way to update the state of an object is to load() it, and then manipulate it directly, while the Session is open: Sometimes this programming model is inefficient since it would require both an SQL SELECT (to load an object) and an SQL UPDATE (to persist its updated state) in the same session. Therefore Hibernate offers an alternate approach. Many applications need to retrieve an object in one transaction, send it to the UI layer for manipulation, then save the changes in a new transaction. (Applications that use this kind of approach in a high-concurrency environment usually use versioned data to ensure transaction isolation.) This approach requires a slightly different programming model to the one described in the last section. Hibernate supports this model by providing the method Session.update(). If the Cat with identifier catId had already been loaded by secondSession when the application tried to update it, an exception would have been thrown. The application should individually update() transient instances reachable from the given transient instance if and only if it wants their state also updated. (Except for lifecycle objects, discussed later.) Hibernate users have requested a general purpose method that either saves a transient instance by generating a new identifier or update the persistent state associated with its current identifier. The saveOrUpdate() method now implements this functionality. Hibernate distinguishes "new" (unsaved) instances from "existing" (saved or loaded in a previous session) instances by the value of their identifier (or version, or timestamp) property. The unsaved-value attribute of the <id> (or <version>, or <timestamp>) mapping specifies which values should be interpreted as representing a "new" instance. ]]> The allowed values of unsaved-value are: any - always save none - always update null - save when identifier is null (this is the default) valid identifier value - save when identifier is null or the given value undefined - the default for version or timestamp, then identifier check is used The usage and semantics of saveOrUpdate() seems to be confusing for new users. Firstly, so long as you are not trying to use instances from one session in another new session, you should not need to use update() or saveOrUpdate(). Some whole applications will never use either of these methods. Usually update() or saveOrUpdate() are used in the following scenario: the application loads an object in the first session the object is passed up to the UI tier some modifications are made to the object the object is passed back down to the business logic tier the application persists these modifications by calling update() in a second session saveOrUpdate() does the following: if the object is already persistent in this session, do nothing if the object has no identifier property, save() it if the object's identifier matches the criteria specified by unsaved-value, save() it if the object is versioned (version or timestamp), then the version will take precedence to identifier check, unless the versions unsaved-value="undefined" (default value) if another object associated with the session has the same identifier, throw an exception The lock() method allows the application to reassociate an unmodified object with a new session. Session.delete() will remove an object's state from the database. Of course, your application might still hold a reference to it. So it's best to think of delete() as making a persistent instance transient. You may also delete many objects at once by passing a Hibernate query string to delete(). You may now delete objects in any order you like, without risk of foreign key constraint violations. Of course, it is still possible to violate a NOT NULL constraint on a foreign key column by deleting objects in the wrong order. From time to time the Session will execute the SQL statements needed to synchronize the JDBC connection's state with the state of objects held in memory. This process, flush, occurs by default at the following points from some invocations of find() or iterate() from net.sf.hibernate.Transaction.commit() from Session.flush() The SQL statements are issued in the following order all entity insertions, in the same order the corresponding objects were saved using Session.save() all entity updates all collection deletions all collection element deletions, updates and insertions all collection insertions all entity deletions, in the same order the corresponding objects were deleted using Session.delete() (An exception is that objects using native ID generation are inserted when they are saved.) Except when you explicity flush(), there are absolutely no guarantees about when the Session executes the JDBC calls, only the order in which they are executed. However, Hibernate does guarantee that the Session.find(..) methods will never return stale data; nor will they return the wrong data. It is possible to change the default behavior so that flush occurs less frequently. The FlushMode class defines three different modes. This is most useful in the case of "readonly" transactions, where it might be used to achieve a (very) slight performance increase. Ending a session involves four distinct phases: flush the session commit the transaction close the session handle exceptions If you happen to be using the Transaction API, you don't need to worry about this step. It will be performed implicitly when the transaction is committed. Otherwise you should call Session.flush() to ensure that all changes are synchronized with the database. If you are using the Hibernate Transaction API, this looks like: If you are managing JDBC transactions yourself you should manually commit() the JDBC connection. If you decide not to commit your changes: or: If you rollback the transaction you should immediately close and discard the current session to ensure that Hibernate's internal state is consistent. A call to Session.close() marks the end of a session. The main implication of close() is that the JDBC connection will be relinquished by the session. If you provided your own connection, close() returns a reference to it, so you can manually close it or return it to the pool. Otherwise close() returns it to the pool. If the Session throws an exception (including any SQLException), you should immediately rollback the transaction, call Session.close() and discard the Session instance. Certain methods of Session will not leave the session in a consistent state. The following exception handling idiom is recommended: Or, when manually managing JDBC transactions: Or, when using a datasource enlisted with JTA: To save or update all objects in a graph of associated objects, you must either save(), saveOrUpdate() or update() each individual object OR map associated objects using cascade="all" or cascade="save-update". Likewise, to delete all objects in a graph, either delete() each individual object OR map associated objects using cascade="all", cascade="all-delete-orphan" or cascade="delete". Recommendation: If the child object's lifespan is bounded by the lifespan of the of the parent object make it a lifecycle object by specifying cascade="all". Otherwise, save() and delete() it explicitly from application code. If you really want to save yourself some extra typing, use cascade="save-update" and explicit delete(). Mapping an association (many-to-one, or collection) with cascade="all" marks the association as a parent/child style relationship where save/update/deletion of the parent results in save/update/deletion of the child(ren). Futhermore, a mere reference to a child from a persistent parent will result in save / update of the child. The metaphor is incomplete, however. A child which becomes unreferenced by its parent is not automatically deleted, except in the case of a <one-to-many> association mapped with cascade="all-delete-orphan". The precise semantics of cascading operations are as follows: If a parent is saved, all children are passed to saveOrUpdate() If a parent is passed to update() or saveOrUpdate(), all children are passed to saveOrUpdate() If a transient child becomes referenced by a persistent parent, it is passed to saveOrUpdate() If a parent is deleted, all children are passed to delete() If a transient child is dereferenced by a persistent parent, nothing special happens (the application should explicitly delete the child if necessary) unless cascade="all-delete-orphan", in which case the "orphaned" child is deleted. Hibernate does not fully implement "persistence by reachability", which would imply (inefficient) persistent garbage collection. However, due to popular demand, Hibernate does support the notion of entities becoming persistent when referenced by another persistent object. Associations marked cascade="save-update" behave in this way. If you wish to use this approach throughout your application, its easier to specify the default-cascade attribute of the <hibernate-mapping> element. The Interceptor interface provides callbacks from the session to the application allowing the application to inspect and / or manipulate properties of a persistent object before it is saved, updated, deleted or loaded. One possible use for this is to track auditing information. For example, the following Interceptor automatically sets the createTimestamp when an Auditable is created and updates the lastUpdateTimestamp property when an Auditable is updated. The interceptor would be specified when a session is created. Hibernate requires a very rich meta-level model of all entity and value types. From time to time, this model is very useful to the application itself. For example, the application might use Hibernate's metadata to implement a "smart" deep-copy algorithm that understands which objects should be copied (eg. mutable value types) and which should not (eg. immutable value types and, possibly, associated entities). Hibernate exposes metadata via the ClassMetadata and CollectionMetadata interfaces and the Type hierarchy. Instances of the metadata interfaces may be obtained from the SessionFactory.