We have just released a first version of our Oliphant project : an open source library that uses change notifications from database servers to improve the management of objects via Hibernate.

Change notifications allow the library to detect stale objects before they are sent back to the database, which avoids useless database transactions and object processing. It also allows for better cache management than a simple LRU system. Objects can be checked at load, persist, flush, and pre-update.

You can see more details about the project on its home page : http://oliphant.keyconsulting.fr