We have a fat client application using hibernate as the persistence layer on the server.

The client is talking to the server throught a facade SessionBeans.

The objects are loaded by Hibernate on the server, detached from the session and sent to the client.

I'm thinking that I could use lazy loading on the objects returned to the client if I could intercept the lazy loading calls and forward them to the server.

I'm just starting with Hibernate and would appreciate any pointers on where to start with.

Thanks.
Dimitry.

In normal conditions for remote applications, lazy loading cant work.
Since the instances that is in the session at server side and in the application at client side are not the same, lazy load will fail with an exception.
You wrote:
"Intercepting lazy load calls", I dont think that is possible with hibernate,
but on upper layer method,you can do this:

boolean loaded = false;
List list;

public List getList() {
if (!loaded) {
// Create a query to load the list from server
// Server sents you the list
// Set the returned list as this object list,
// set 'loaded' to true.
}
return list;
}

I dont think that this will add you improvement so much until this getList method is called so rarerly, go with lazy="false"