I'm new to Hibernate and trying to understand how, at a high level, Hibernate works in a large IOC container environment. Here is the general scenario:

• A controller object invokes a domain object method, passing the parameters required to perform an update in a DTO
• The IOC container starts a transaction (presumably, and a Hibernate session)
• The domain object method requests the container to instantiate the top-level business object(s)
• The domain object method invokes setters and business methods that perform the update within the business objects
• The domain object method commits the transaction

Assume the business objects are properly annotated and the IOC container and Hibernate are fully configured. Here are my questions:

• If the IOC container "load(entity, id)" method is invoked, will it cooperate with Hibernate to instantiate the entity without some form of DAO helper class?
• Will Hibernate instrument entity classes to load contained entities when the parent getters are invoked?
• Will Hibernate keep track of the entities loaded during the session and persist the dirty entities when the session is flushed?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts...