Hi,
I am persisting a class containing a member variable whose type is List<user defined object>. When I try to retrieve the persisted instance of this class, the List object is replaced by a PersistentList, which is a hibernate class.

My application is such that the persistence is done at a layer other than the client, and therefore the inclusion of this PersistentList makes it mandatory for me to include the hibernate.jar file in the client, which I do not want.

Is there any way of handling this ?

Regards,
Sudipto

May be I do not understand...
How does your persistent class get from the Java VM using Hibernate and thus hibernate.jar to the 'other layer' (client)?
Is that one (client) running in a different Java VM (different class loader / class path)?

Hibernate uses Persistent[Collection] to handle lazy-loading. I think the only solution you have is to disconnect object that you're going to send to the client side and then addAll() on a new Java List to you will reset at the old place.

Yes, I know, it seems quite complicated. But I'm not sure there's another way. I don't remember if Hibernate can avoid using PersistentList, maybe when using StatelessSession?

What behavior were you hoping to preserve by persisting this class in this way? If you don't care about tracking the dirty objects and whatnot, and only that the collection of objects remains the same for save.load, then you can write your own writeObject method. When you do, just copy your list into an ArrayList before you save.

There is also another more complex way using annotations which is basically the system RMI uses.

But overall might I suggest that you keep the layer responsible for the creation of an object also responsible for its storage and loading. I overcame this project in my application by handing out tokens to my objects and keeping my objects from crossing classloader boundaries. Well at least I do not allow saving in the classloader that did not create the object.