Can someone tell me if there is a way to tell the 2nd level cache to fetch objects based on a unique property which isnt the primary key ?

I have an object which has a auto-increment primary key as well as a uniqe string (name). I want to be able to get the object from the cache based on this unique string and NOT the primary auto-increment key. Is there any way to do this ? I though maybe with the natutal-id tag but I'm unable to figure it out... any help would be much appreciated.

Nick.

Nick,

The second level cache is automatically queried before any actual database call is made. Likewise, the second level cache is automatically updated whenever new objects are persisted/updated. Why would you need to manually add or remove items from the cache? You can force hibernate to remove items from the cache by using evict(). You retreive items from the second level cache automatically when you execute HQL queries and the associated functions load(), get(), list(), etc...

There is no need to worry about what key the cache is using so long as it is using a serializable key/value pair.

I hope this answers your question.

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Nathan

Thats not possible. Hibernate uses the id/composite id as the key while caching the objects. You will find more details about the second level cache in this article:

http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t48846.html