Hi,
Lets say I load an Object which is a root of a large relationships tree, some of it is retrieved in lazy mode.
Would the relationship expand also after I close the session?

I am asking this because I am working on a Web-App, in which there is a big amount data with complex relationships. This data does not change, and it would be better if I can retrieve it once, put it in the application context and use it from all servlet requests.

Cheers,
Ron

Once the session is closed you will receive an error to the effect of "LazyInitializationException: unable to lazily initialize a collection (no session or session closed)". The object is "detached" at that point and must be re-attached to become persistent.

You have to explicitly re-attach the object to a new session using session.lock( object, LockMode.NONE ) or session.update( object ) in order to continue using lazy initialization.

There are some strategies for handling this on the wiki:

http://hibernate.org/42.html
http://hibernate.org/168.html

I also highly recommend Hibernate in Action...I did not fully understand the implications of my design decisions until I read that book, and it covers long user transactions in greate detail.

- Jesse
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