I am working with a database which while poorly written is a well known oracle example - a trigger in the database throws an exception when an update statement updates a particular column to the current value of that column :-( is there any way to cause an update to only update different values rather than doing an update across a row

use dynamic-update="true" on the class

Thank you for your prompt and effective response -
This raises one more question - I have not found an efficient way to log the values which are changed bu dumping the sql I see
Hibernate: update EMPLOYEES set SALARY=? where EMPLOYEE_ID=?
but not the values that are being stored
Also some variables seem to be included in the update that seem not to have changed and others are not there at all and It is unclear where these things are being decided - any hints as to where to look

Have a log at the provided log4j.properties.