In Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 (O'Reilly 2006) it states "The AUTO strategy tells the persistence provider that you are allowing it to generate the key for you" (page 94). I don't specifically know the Hibernate implements this feature, but might I suggest that you utilize the features of your database to create primary keys instead. With Postgresql you could use a mapping like this: @Id | @Column(name = "id", unique = true, nullable = false) | @SequenceGenerator(name="identifier", sequenceName="ppl_id_seq", allocationSize=1) | @GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.SEQUENCE, generator="identifier") | @NotNull | public int getId() | { | return this.id; | } In this manner Hibernate would assign primary keys from the Postgresql sequence rather than internally. This would allow Hibernate to "play nicely" with other database users. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4024423#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...