Hibernate + Swing

Question

What's the best practice?

• A single session for the whole app
• A session per window
• A session per thread, and detaching everything at random
• Something else?

I've googled around, and there's no consensus. Everyone says something, and then takes it back. I find lugging a session around stupid...

So, what's the deal?

Answer 1

Maybe a session per event handling is the right approach. In web applications, we usually create one session per request (using all those OpenSessionInView stuff and etc). If we think through, every request in web application is a different interaction in the application, and in a Swing application, every fired event is a different interaction in the application. If we apply the same principles we apply in web applications in Swing applications, then we should create a session per event handling.

But we must determinate if using Hibernate is the best option... The database you are accessing is a local or a remote database? Do other applications share the same database? You should consider creating an EJB\HTTP backend instead having your Swing applications directly accessing the database. Using Hibernate suggest that you have a not-so-simple database, so I think you should consider create a EJB\HTTP backend.