EDIT

Applied in changeset cdmlib|5348613baa59038220d4efd1e4a851e3ccdb6c58.

I think the new method, which by the way is only used for test classes, is irritating:

public T loadProxy(int id);

The method name suggests that a proxy method is returned always. This is not the case as explained in the java doc of org.hibernate.Session.load(Class<T> theClass, Serializable id) : "This method might return a proxied instance that is initialized on-demand, when a non-identifier method is accessed."

This additional method, which is similar to other find*(..) methods makes the Cdm*Dao-API unclear as there are already many similar methods.

Can't you use getSession().load() in the test class directly or do you expect that the loadProxy() will be used in non test classes frequently? In the latter case I suggest renaming it to just

public T load(int id);

Andreas Kohlbecker wrote:

I think the new method, which by the way is only used for test classes, is irritating:

public T loadProxy(int id);

The method name suggests that a proxy method is returned always. This is not the case as explained in the java doc of org.hibernate.Session.load(Class<T> theClass, Serializable id) : "This method might return a proxied instance that is initialized on-demand, when a non-identifier method is accessed."

This additional method, which is similar to other find*(..) methods makes the Cdm*Dao-API unclear as there are already many similar methods.

Can't you use getSession().load() in the test class directly or do you expect that the loadProxy() will be used in non test classes frequently? In the latter cased I suggest renaming it it to just

public T load(int id);

Yes, there is a need for this method if you want to attache an object to another one without initializing the object and without invoking cascade during save afterwards. This is for performance reasons and it is e.g. needed for imports.

We may discuss the label for the method. I first thought about loadWithoutInitializing but it is a bit long but maybe semantically better.

Purely "load(int)" has many disadvantages as all service.load(...) methods do explicitly initialize the return object(s) so it is very unexpected that only load(int) does not initialize (while eg. load(uuid) or load(int, null) do initialize.

Also the service.loadProxy(int) will always return a proxy except for the situation where it is used within another transaction. This is because it will only return a non-proxy if the object is already in the session which can only be the case if used within another transaction.

Ok, thank you for the explanation. I would prefer having the same method names in the DAP and service layer. We can keep loadProxy(int) if the java doc of the methods are comprehensive enough to fully understand the implications of these methods. You could use the text of your comment above for extending the java doc.

I finally decided to rename the methods (in service and persistence) to loadWithoutInitializing as this is semantically more correct. Also I slightly adapted the javadoc.

So I guess we can close the ticket or are there any other open issues?