on 2) : as long as we can postpone db specific handling, that will make development much easier and our progress much faster. db-specific things means that we would need a set of mappings for each db. that means that we would have to maintain and synchronize between all those copies. so i'ld like to keep the same mappings for all the dbs. and if we need to apply a small modification for one particular db, it should be possible to apply this change automatically from the single original source mapping files. on 3): cause that results in incorrect behaviour in a cluster. 2nd level cache of hibernate is only used for process definition caching as that can be assumed to be static information that (after deployment) will not change. View the original post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4209830#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...