I have an application running on Jboss and using spring and hibernate. Some of these tables have configuration data for the application and we change this data using an external tool.

Sometimes the application recognizes these changes and sometimes it doesn't.

My question is: If I make data changes using an external tool, should or can hibernate recognize these changes or do I need to re-start the application?

Thanks,
Dennis

Hi,
>>> If I make data changes using an external tool, should or can hibernate recognize these changes

As far as I understand,
it is not possible for Hibernate ( or any ORM tool ) to recognize changes made to the database by an external entity in real time.
Hibernate doesn't poll the database to see if some objects are modified just to pull them up immediately.
It is not practically viable to do so.

>>> do I need to re-start the application?
Not really.
Bypass the cache!
i) clear the session. ( might be a costly affair )
ii) session.refresh(object) ( if you know which object to refresh )

You can also have a look at,
i) Hibernate LockModes
ii) Generated and Default Property Values

They address similar issues.

--------------------------------------------
Rate the reply if you find it helpful