I don't understand why I get the associated child-objects of an object loaded without loading them explicit with sess.load() - thanks to hibernate - whereas I have to save new added child-objects explicitly with sess.save().

Why is it necessary to save them explicitly with sess.save() whereas loading works automatically when objects get needed?

Is it possible to get added child-objects saved automatically with the help of the mapping-file?

Hi,

When u load the parent object with lazy loading set to false, you will have child objects attached with the parent.

And saving your parent object will also save your child object. look into the below link for one-to-many associations.
http://www.hibernate.org/hib_docs/v3/re ... tional-12m
http://www.hibernate.org/hib_docs/v3/re ... tional-m21

Thank you ramnath, your answer helped and I've rated it.

But this brings up a new question.
I need the lazy-loading feature, because I have a huge number of child-objects associated (about several thousands).
With the lazy-load I aimed to load only the first "level" and to load the deeper "levels" only if needed.
Is there another way or will I have to save and update objects explicitly with sess.saveorupdate(), when I use the lazy-load-feature?
Or maybe I've misunderstood the lazy-feature at all?

Cascade settings will determine how the object graph is walked to automatically save objects.

Beware bi-directional associations however, because the cascade settings will determine how the graph is walked to see what should be saved, but the 'inverse' attribute will determine what actually causes a relationship to be persisted. So sometimes the cascade setting can cause a child object to be saved, but the child will not have the non-inverse side of the association and will therefore not be associated with its parent.