Is this the expected behavior that merging a collection will _always_
cause a version update??
if there are additions/removals to the collection then yes.
The reason being that the actual collections are considered value types of
the entity.
If you don't want optimistic locking to fire here then set
optimistic-lock="false" on the association.
/max
--
--
Max Rydahl Andersen
callto://max.rydahl.andersen
Hibernate
max(a)hibernate.org
http://hibernate.org
JBoss a division of Red Hat
max.andersen(a)jboss.com