I have spent several hours trying to solve this problem and posting here as my last resort.

I have a system where offers are sent to recipients. There is a many-to-many relationship between Offer and Recipient. Recipient has a unique key on the email address.

The following pseudo-test describes the problem. The test passes if the session is not cleared in step 3.

1. Create an offer with recipient R.
2. Save the offer to the database: [b]session.saveOrUpdate(offer)[/b]
3. session.flush(); session.clear(); - this simulates the submission of an HTML form which uploads an update to the first name of recipient R
4. Look up recipient R from the database by email address. Hibernate returns a different object R' representing the same recipient.
5. R'.setFirstName("New First Name")
6. session.saveOrUpdate(offer) -> [b]throws org.hibernate.NonUniqueObjectException: a different object with the same identifier value was already associated with the session: [Recipient#16665][/b]

I will appreciate any help on this.

Thanks.