As far as i understood hibernate uses id property to identify what type of the SQL statement should be executed: id is null - insert, id is not null - update. And in the same time i'd like to have 'assigned' id to cache object by id and to have ability to compare/hash objects by id. With assigned id saveOrUpdate doesn't work correctly and i have to choose store(save or update) method myself. That's ok but cascades does not work at all and i can't affect them either! Is there any way to have assigned id and use saveOrUpdate method?

Use unsaved-value for version/timestamp propertys or use a custom interceptor.

thx, it works with Interceptor.isUnsaved()