if you follow the sourcecode (it's free) you see that the difference is that one method does a session.load and the other does a session.get. If you look furter, you'll see that session is a org.hibernate.Session, so the difference is in the behaviour of that. If you then use google (it is your friend you know) with a 'hibernate session load get' query, you'll get something back like http://lijinjoseji.wordpress.com/2007/01/20/hibernate-difference-between-... Next time I assume you can do this very easily yourself (it cost me less than 15 minutes and with a minimal of 1 hour at a rate of ?100,- per hour, that is what I would charge you in real life, and NO I'M NOT KIDDING) View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4043541#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...