Hi, I consider example 2 the better approach. Relationships are quite complicated to manage, so it is better to keep this logic in the session bean layer and hide it from the client. This way, you can change e.g. CascadeTypes of the relation without having to change client code. But this are just my personal opinion, don't consider it a design pattern ;-). Wolfgang View the original post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4220553#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...