I have a bidirectional many to many relationship
between tables user and role

the inverse attribute is set to true in role.hbm.xml
the inverse attribute is set to false in role.hbm.xml
cascade is set to all for both

I can add/remove a role to a user with sess.update (user)

I can add a user to a role with sess.update(role)

But I can't remove a user from a role with sess.update(role)
It seems hibernate updates role, but doesn't delete the
association in the user_role table

Did I miss something or do I have to use the 'not-inverse'
end (user) to remove the association .

(I'm working with detached objects through stateless EJB)

are you using detached object?

Yes I'm using detached objects