"kukeltje" wrote : 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) Thanks, I didn't really want you to search for me, just if anyone knew and if it were an important issue. I think it is, but there are still some subtleties you have to be careful of when using "load" that would be worth discussion. I did trace the code to session.load(), but I was under the impression that hibernate might not be the only persistence implementation available or planned and that therefore the semantic difference between "get" and "load" should be documented (and enforced) at the JbpmContext level where it is exposed. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4043545#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...