I have a general question concerning inserting records using hibernate.

I have a table with several columns that would make the "business" primary key and an id column as technical primary key.

As I don't want records doubled while inserting, using jdbc I would first check if the record I am going to insert, is in the table already using a select statement targeting the "business" primary key. If I find such a record, I would update it, otherwise insert it into the table.

One could say, make your business primary a technical composite id, but i don't like semantik keys.

How would I do that in hibernate? Is their a way to use a custom saveOrUpdate-Method telling hibernate to check coloumn 1 and column 2 and if they are equal just update?

Thanks for your help!

Rudolf

session.saveOrUpdate(yourObject);

Thanks for replying. SaveOrUpdate won't work here, because I am not talking aboutthe primary key. Example: A table "address" with id, name, street, zip. Id is the primary key.

When I create a new address object, I first want to check if one with the same name and zip is already in the db. as far as I know Hibernate checks whether the primary key is already been used.

so you will have to do that manually - check if it is already there and use that object instead.

In your DAO layer, construct a query via Hibernate that searches on the criteria you want. If you get an object back, you know you are just updating. Either copy the properties from your "does it need to be saved bean" to the one just retrieved, or used the Id from the retrieved one and set it on the to be saved. Then call updateOrSave(). The latter allows you to use the same method call for both a save new or update old.

Hi rosemeyer2,

I guess u have to manually fire a query to check if the row exists in the table.

In case it isn't , u can always fire a query.save()

Otherwise, u can fetch it and then change the attributes required and then doa session.merge() instead of session.update()

U will avoid lots of exception related to dirtyChecks or detached objects in the session.

Any comments????