Before I get thinking too hard about where the isolated tx gets committed and what transaction is in effect in step 3.... an implementation problem is the code in step 2.5 that "knows it needs to go to the db" is in the core hibernate module, not the JBC integration layer. So some sort of addition would need to be made to the general 2nd level cache API (and implemented by all impls) to support the step 2.5 call. I'll let Steve comment on how he sees that. That said, I understand where you're coming from on wanting to find a way to get rid of this. Will think about it. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4163677#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...