Ok thanks mucho. Yes my thought was the cache load would get too large without a cacheloader, hence it would offload via the jdbccacheloader into mysql, then re-get from there as needed (in a prepped state). With a large data set, I assumed there would be much to gain from that. So with hibernate it'll just reload from the db after passivation, same as the jdbc loader, fine. A good ref cache config file for jboss/hibernate: http://fisheye.jboss.com/viewrep/JBoss/JBossCache/etc/META-INF/hibernate-... View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4031128#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...