This all very much depends on your desgin choices. Look at http://blog.hibernate.org/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/Gavin%20King/stages-of-adop... which quickly runs over various possible patterns. My preferred technique is to use a conversation. I use a seperate backing bean for create and edit (which may extend a shared functions bean if necessary). I use a third bean for searching (stateless at the monent), and then use a datamodel row selection to populate the edit bean. For the 'create' - start the conversation on entering the page, end it on pushing the create button. For 'edit' - start the conversation on entering the page, end it on pushing ok, and have an apply button which will flush current changes to the database but not close the page. For both I provide a cancel button which will end the conversation and navigate away but without flushing any changes. If the user navigates away I let the conversation time out (and not flush anything to the database). I hope that didn't make you more confused. If you want me to expand on a particular part, ask. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3963982#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...