I must be overlooking something but am trying to find how to exclude certain attributes ( and components) from optimistic locking when they are updated.

Example:
xml mapping

<component name="bla" optimistic-lock="false">
.....
</component>

Became embedable, but how do I specify the lock strategy?

It is on my todo list

Thanks for clarifying that. So will that be a hibernate extension or will it be supported by the EJB3 standards?

not in EJB3