Manik: I think using a separate method is likely a cleaner approach. I do want to note here that a separate method by itself can't solve the correctness issues I noted in my comment of Sep. 18th, at least for the pessimistic case, since basically the cache has no way of knowing whether the put() or the update() is providing newer information. In the optimstic case with explicit versioning, the situation is better. Scott: Are you wondering if we can get a "dirty read" if we call putFromExternalRead() the transaction suspended? The assumption here is that the caller of putFromExternalRead() only calls the method with data that was committed to the database before the start of the outer transaction, and not with data that was updated in the outer transaction. Hibernate, for example, makes that guarantee except in the most exotic situations. (You might be able to fool it if you tried hard.) View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3977555#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...