When session.update() is executed, it doesn't return error when the object being updated doesn't exist in the DB.
This is bad because the client doesn't know if he is updating an existing object or not.

Is there a way to make session.update() throw an Exception without the need to do a session.load(...) before it?

disable JDBC batch updates.

hmm... how do I disable jdbc batch updates?

hibernate.jdbc.batch_size=0 in your hibernate.cfg.xml

Thanks Emmanuel for the batch tip.