Regarding the FAQ listed on page 171 of the book. Since adding a new bid for an Item updates the Item version number (ie. changes to the child collection make the parent dirty) am I correct in assuming that a StaleObjectStateException might be thrown if an item receives a bid while the Item details (say description) are being edited?

This assumes that one would use a detached Item for the editing process that would be stored in HttpSession while the Item between the request to edit the Item and the POST to apply the changes (presumably by the auction's creator, perhaps to correct a small typo in the Item description).

Thanks in advance,

Thomas

Yes, correct. As you can see, this behavior is good in some situations but not good in others (e.g. when you don't want a particular one-to-many "link" modification make the "one" object dirty). Thats why this behavior can be defined for each association/property in Hibernate3.

Fantastic. Thanks for the quick reply.