Could someone shed me some light whether this is currently doable or not?

I read these two articles and managed to save XML to database by defining the mapping in hbm.xml.

http://javaboutique.internet.com/tutorials/mapping/
http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/core/3. ... l/xml.html

I am wondering whether I could reuse the same hbm.xml mapping file to map XML to my POJO without saving it to database first. Looking into Session definition

http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/core/3. ... ssion.html

I tried the save/merge method but the returned object is not my object org.dom4j.tree.DefaultElement.

Any advice is much appreciated.

Thanks! Gerry