This is more of a general question that I have not been able to determine by reviewing the documentation. Is it possible to restrict the fields that Hibernate retrieves for a POJO? I've got tables/POJOs that have 60-70 fields each and in some situations I want to retrieve all the fields. However in other situations I only want to retrieve a minimal (4-5) number of fields, especially in scenarios where I'm bringing back large quantities. Is it possible to restrict the fields and if so how? Can you have a partially filled POJO? Thanks in advance.

Hibernate 3 enables you to set lazy="true" on the class. This means your properties are fetched lazily from the database.

No, it doesn't. It means that a proxy will be generated for the class so that an instance will only be loaded once it is accessed. The lazy="true" on a _property_ enables interception and lazy loading of individual properties. It requires bytecode instrumentation of the class for injection of interception code.