IIRC, the second level cache is off by default. Also, I found this blog entry regarding Hibernate/EJB3 Tuning on the JBoss blog: http://jboss.org/jbossBlog/blog/?month=1&day=23&year=2006 Here is a snippet: anonymous wrote : Note that the default flush mode (auto) in Hibernate flushes data whenever a query is executed or whenever a transaction is committed. So configuring none of this should give you the desired result. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3975840#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...