Some more questions: 2) Why is an exception thrown if an entity is persisted but it has relationships to new or removed entities without a cascade? Isn't the whole point of the cascade setting to give the flexibility of which relationships should be persisted? 3) Many examples of detached entities give the example of a TRANSACTION-scoped EntityManager after the transaction has committed. But in an SLSB, how would you even have access to that detached entity (unless you serialize it and send it on its way...). Isn't the SLSB after the transaction commits gone, which would leave you no way to get to the detached entity reference, right? View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3997747#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...