Simple question, I think, but I can't find the answer in the forums.
I'm trying to work out a way of updating a property without loading first, something like:
VO valueObject = new VO();
valueobject.setPK(existingPK);
valueobject.setApproved(true);
session.update(valueobject);

This is just to avoid having to avoid loading the object to set a single attribute.
Thanks for any suggestions.

Yes you can update a detached object in a new session without reloading it. See section 9.4.2 in the Hibernate documentation.

No, I understand how I can use a detached object. What I want to know is how to do it *without* having a detached object. Is there any way to instantiate a new value object, set the key and new property values, and then update only those new properties?

Use JDBC directly.