I am using hibernate 3.0 final.

This is a design question so I am not sure any of the requested information is needed. If it is needed I can add it to the post.

I am trying to load an entity twice in a same session. Here is what is going on.

- open session s
- I first load entity of type com.mycompany.MyEntity with db id 100 using session s
- i update one of the associations/properties of the entity
- I then call update (say on a DAO layer from a higher layer) with that same entity (NOTE: session is still open using ThreadLocals)
- in the update code I try to discern if a particular property changed so I can create an arhive entry for it using its old value (currently in the db).
THis last step is proving a little tricky as the first level cache is not allowing me to get a fresh copy of the entity from the database.
I would like to be able to tell the session to load the same entity even if it already exists in the session cache. Can this be done or do I have to open a new session?

My other question is on the approach.
What is the best way to do this? Should I use interceptors or is there a better strategy to handle archiving row state before an update?

Thanks

To answer your question logically, increasing the isolation level to READ_COMMITED may do the trick.

NOTE : I am under the assumtion that you have not yet commited the transaction after update.