Hi

Maybe a stupid one, but do I have to load a complete object
in order to perform an update on a single field?

I simply want to update a flag field and currently only
succeed by loading the whole object, modifying the
flag and persist the whole thing again...

(of course...I could manage to get the connection and
do it with pure JDBC, but a Hibernate-solution would
be for reasons of portablility, preferable...)

Greetings,
mac

How do you think Hibernate will know WHICH property you want to update if you did not load object?

...maybe something like the not-null mechanism....
(if fields are null or have a default value are not touched)
...just an idea....
anyway...it would be nice to have a mechanism as it is also
possible with native sql ;-)

1. Null is valid value for a property and you often need to set and save null value
2. Using a special "default" value has at least two drawbacks - first, you have to specify default value for EVERY property and second - you will not be able to assign and save that default value to a field because from Hibernate's point of view this will mean 'do not save this field, it is unchanged"

I'm afraid there is no way to implement the feature you aking without rewriting just everything. Every object will need to track "dirty" status for every property itself. That means you will either have to code it yourself or use some tricks with runtime class generation. I doubt you want to code it manually :)