Hibernate version:
3.1

i followed these instructions:
http://www.devx.com/dbzone/Article/29685/
the only difference is that i use my own class, but that shouldn't matter.

i managed to get the cache filled (at the first execution of my simple query), but hibernate doesn't even try to get an object from the cache the second/third etc. time it executes the query. the query cache works perfeclty - what could be wrong?

Hibernate will check the second level cache only when you use the get() API available on Session. If you are querying using HQL then the second level cache will not be used for finding the object.

Here's an article for more details:

http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t48846.html