Upon getting a composite value object in my presentation layer with a particular set of one-to-many mappings I would like to have the value object no longer attempt to lazily initialize a collection, but return null if not populated.

Is there a way to do this in Hibernate? Is there a disable method or a clone method? or do I have to write a method to clone my composite value object using Set (HashSet) instead of PersistentCollection.

Here's the scenario: a 3 tier application with the presentation layer being Struts, the business layer using Session EJBs, and Hibernate for ORM. Once a composite value object leaves the business layer I no longer want it to engage in a transaction (open/reconnect/close/disconnect from a Hibernate Session).

Thanks in advance, Dan

No,
No.

How can you reassociate the object graph if you do such a thing. Hibernate will guess you explicitly set your collection to null

Is there a way to do a generic toString on the composite value object described without invoking the lazy instantiation?

Not wo hacking hibernate I suppose. Only equals, hashcode and id does not break the lazyness AFAIK

Thanks for the help, Dan