I've learned yesterday (thanks Gavin) how to completely control the object graph cut transfered to client tier. Clients modify this graph, send it back and automagically everything gets reattached and updated on a server tier.

I cannot help but wonder if ther is a way to somehow place surrogates on certain object reference within an object graph on a client tier and thus tell hibernate that certain parts of the object graph didn't change and save some serialization time as well?

What are the strategies available?

All the best,
Vladimir

It is all dependant upon the cascade style. cascade="none" will ignore associated objects.

That is correct. However, I think I did not explain my "problem" appropriately enough for you to understand me.

Let me try with a rudimentary example. For example, class A has a many-to-one relationship to B. When A is loaded to client tier, B, from many-to-one relationship, is fetched as well. Client edits A but is not allowed to alter relationship to B. Now when A is to be reattached back to server, in the process of serialization over the wire B gets serialized as well since it is reachable from reference A.

Now, the question. How can I avoid serialization of B and yet retain hibernate in belief that A's many-to-one relationship to B did not change.

In your previous answer, did you mean to say that when I set cascade="none" for A's many-to-one relationship to B , I can simply set a reference to B in A to null and serialize back to server? Or something else?

Hope I am making more sense this time.

All the best,
Vladimir