Using JSF/Richfaces and Hibernate. In my hybernate mapping file, i have put

I use getCurrentSession to get the session.

I have a class Order which contains a collection of OrderItem objects. I display a list of Orders in a xhtml page. The aim is that when i select a particular order, it will be displayed in a different xhtml page together with its children (OrderItems). However i get the "LazyInitializationException: Session has been closed" problem.

I am in a dilemma because for my implementation, i am forced to open transactions for everything, e.g. to get the list of Orders, i have to open and commit a transaction. Unfortunately, committing a transaction seems to close the session. How do i make the session to persist through the application session, while at the same time allowing commits to a Database?

Hello,
to solve this kind of issues the Seam framework was created, standardized now as CDI (Seam 3 core is named Weld, the reference implementation of CDI).
please see http://www.seamframework.org.

Alternatively if you're using JPA in JavaEE6 look for the extended persistence context, that's the same pattern used in Seam: you get a persistence context (similar to Session) associated to your session beans, so you can span your logic in multiple page views.

You should *not* bind the session to the current thread, as you don't know if the next page request is going to be served by the same thread, so you need another placeholder for the session. That's why it's handy to look for the before mentioned frameworks. Seam comes with great examples using Hibernate, RichFaces and xhtml using facelets, so it looks like suited to your case.