I am using Hibernate 2.1.7 with mySQL.

When I change a value in the database by means of the native frontend, Hibernate does not show the changes until I restart my webserver.

Does Hibernate cache and is there a way to switch that off?

Thanks for your help

Klaus

Hibernate does not cache anything without you have told it ;)

One way to tell it is to load all objects in have only one session (bad).
You might also have enabled the second-level cache.

Read the docs about session and cache handling.

Hibernate In Action is also very much recommended for this.