Chapter 20.

Improving performance
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docs.jboss.org/hibernate/orm/3.5/reference/en/html/performance.html

20.1. Fetching strategies

Hibernate uses a fetching strategy to retrieve associated objects if the application needs to navigate the
association. Fetch strategies can be declared in the O/R mapping metadata, or over-ridden by a particular HQL or
Criteria query.

Hibernate3 defines the following fetching strategies:

Join fetching: Hibernate retrieves the associated instance or collection in the same SELECT , using an OUTER
JOIN .

Select fetching: a second SELECT is used to retrieve the associated entity or collection. Unless you explicitly
disable lazy fetching by specifying lazy="false" , this second select will only be executed when you access
the association.

Subselect fetching: a second SELECT is used to retrieve the associated collections for all entities retrieved in
a previous query or fetch. Unless you explicitly disable lazy fetching by specifying lazy="false" , this second
select will only be executed when you access the association.

Batch fetching: an optimization strategy for select fetching. Hibernate retrieves a batch of entity instances or
collections in a single SELECT by specifying a list of primary or foreign keys.

Hibernate also distinguishes between:

Immediate fetching: an association, collection or attribute is fetched immediately when the owner is loaded.

Lazy collection fetching: a collection is fetched when the application invokes an operation upon that
collection. This is the default for collections.

"Extra-lazy" collection fetching: individual elements of the collection are accessed from the database as
needed. Hibernate tries not to fetch the whole collection into memory unless absolutely needed. It is
suitable for large collections.

Proxy fetching: a single-valued association is fetched when a method other than the identifier getter is
invoked upon the associated object.

"No-proxy" fetching: a single-valued association is fetched when the instance variable is accessed. Compared
to proxy fetching, this approach is less lazy; the association is fetched even when only the identifier is
accessed. It is also more transparent, since no proxy is visible to the application. This approach requires
buildtime bytecode instrumentation and is rarely necessary.

Lazy attribute fetching: an attribute or single valued association is fetched when the instance variable is
accessed. This approach requires buildtime bytecode instrumentation and is rarely necessary.

We have two orthogonal notions here: when is the association fetched and how is it fetched. It is important that
you do not confuse them. We use fetch to tune performance. We can use lazy to define a contract for what
data is always available in any detached instance of a particular class.

20.1.1. Working with lazy associations

By default, Hibernate3 uses lazy select fetching for collections and lazy proxy fetching for single-valued
associations. These defaults make sense for most associations in the majority of applications.

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If you set hibernate.default_batch_fetch_size , Hibernate will use the batch fetch optimization for lazy fetching. This
optimization can also be enabled at a more granular level.

Please be aware that access to a lazy association outside of the context of an open Hibernate session will result in
an exception. For example:

s = sessions.openSession();

Transaction tx = s.beginTransaction();

User u = (User) s.createQuery("from User u where u.name=:userName")

.setString("userName", userName).uniqueResult();

Map permissions = u.getPermissions();

tx.commit();

s.close();

Integer accessLevel = (Integer) permissions.get("accounts"); // Error!

Since the permissions collection was not initialized when the Session was closed, the collection will not be able to
load its state. Hibernate does not support lazy initialization for detached objects. This can be fixed by moving the code
that reads from the collection to just before the transaction is committed.

Alternatively, you can use a non-lazy collection or association, by specifying lazy="false" for the association
mapping. However, it is intended that lazy initialization be used for almost all collections and associations. If you
define too many non-lazy associations in your object model, Hibernate will fetch the entire database into memory
in every transaction.

On the other hand, you can use join fetching, which is non-lazy by nature, instead of select fetching in a particular
transaction. We will now explain how to customize the fetching strategy. In Hibernate3, the mechanisms for
choosing a fetch strategy are identical for single-valued associations and collections.

20.1.2. Tuning fetch strategies

Select fetching (the default) is extremely vulnerable to N+1 selects problems, so we might want to enable join
fetching in the mapping document:

<set name="permissions"

fetch="join">

<key column="userId"/>

<one-to-many class="Permission"/>

</set

<many-to-one name="mother" class="Cat" fetch="join"/>

The fetch strategy defined in the mapping document affects:

retrieval via get() or load()

retrieval that happens implicitly when an association is navigated

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 Criteria queries

HQL queries if subselect fetching is used

Irrespective of the fetching strategy you use, the defined non-lazy graph is guaranteed to be loaded into memory.
This might, however, result in several immediate selects being used to execute a particular HQL query.

Usually, the mapping document is not used to customize fetching. Instead, we keep the default behavior, and
override it for a particular transaction, using left join fetch in HQL. This tells Hibernate to fetch the association
eagerly in the first select, using an outer join. In the Criteria query API, you would use
setFetchMode(FetchMode.JOIN) .

If you want to change the fetching strategy used by get() or load() , you can use a Criteria query. For example:

User user = (User) session.createCriteria(User.class)

.setFetchMode("permissions", FetchMode.JOIN)

.add( Restrictions.idEq(userId) )

.uniqueResult();

This is Hibernate's equivalent of what some ORM solutions call a "fetch plan".

A completely different approach to problems with N+1 selects is to use the second-level cache.

20.1.3. Single-ended association proxies

Lazy fetching for collections is implemented using Hibernate's own implementation of persistent collections.
However, a different mechanism is needed for lazy behavior in single-ended associations. The target entity of the
association must be proxied. Hibernate implements lazy initializing proxies for persistent objects using runtime
bytecode enhancement which is accessed via the CGLIB library.

At startup, Hibernate3 generates proxies by default for all persistent classes and uses them to enable lazy fetching
of many-to-one and one-to-one associations.

The mapping file may declare an interface to use as the proxy interface for that class, with the proxy attribute. By
default, Hibernate uses a subclass of the class. The proxied class must implement a default constructor with at least
package visibility. This constructor is recommended for all persistent classes.

There are potential problems to note when extending this approach to polymorphic classes.For example:

<class name="Cat" proxy="Cat">

......

<subclass name="DomesticCat">

.....

</subclass>

</class>

Firstly, instances of Cat will never be castable to DomesticCat , even if the underlying instance is an instance of
DomesticCat :

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Cat cat = (Cat) session.load(Cat.class, id); // instantiate a proxy (does not hit the db)

if ( cat.isDomesticCat() ) { // hit the db to initialize the proxy

DomesticCat dc = (DomesticCat) cat; // Error!

....

Secondly, it is possible to break proxy == :

Cat cat = (Cat) session.load(Cat.class, id); // instantiate a Cat proxy

DomesticCat dc =

(DomesticCat) session.load(DomesticCat.class, id); // acquire new DomesticCat proxy!

System.out.println(cat==dc); // false

However, the situation is not quite as bad as it looks. Even though we now have two references to different proxy
objects, the underlying instance will still be the same object:

cat.setWeight(11.0); // hit the db to initialize the proxy

System.out.println( dc.getWeight() ); // 11.0

Third, you cannot use a CGLIB proxy for a final class or a class with any final methods.

Finally, if your persistent object acquires any resources upon instantiation (e.g. in initializers or default
constructor), then those resources will also be acquired by the proxy. The proxy class is an actual subclass of the
persistent class.

These problems are all due to fundamental limitations in Java's single inheritance model. To avoid these problems
your persistent classes must each implement an interface that declares its business methods. You should specify
these interfaces in the mapping file where CatImpl implements the interface Cat and DomesticCatImpl
implements the interface DomesticCat . For example:

<class name="CatImpl" proxy="Cat">

......

<subclass name="DomesticCatImpl" proxy="DomesticCat">

.....

</subclass>

</class>

Then proxies for instances of Cat and DomesticCat can be returned by load() or iterate() .

Cat cat = (Cat) session.load(CatImpl.class, catid);

Iterator iter = session.createQuery("from CatImpl as cat where cat.name='fritz'").iterate();

Cat fritz = (Cat) iter.next();

Note
list() does not usually return proxies.

Relationships are also lazily initialized. This means you must declare any properties to be of type Cat , not
CatImpl .
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Certain operations do not require proxy initialization:

equals() : if the persistent class does not override equals()

hashCode() : if the persistent class does not override hashCode()

The identifier getter method

Hibernate will detect persistent classes that override equals() or hashCode() .

By choosing lazy="no-proxy" instead of the default lazy="proxy" , you can avoid problems associated with
typecasting. However, buildtime bytecode instrumentation is required, and all operations will result in immediate
proxy initialization.

20.1.4. Initializing collections and proxies

A LazyInitializationException will be thrown by Hibernate if an uninitialized collection or proxy is accessed outside
of the scope of the Session , i.e., when the entity owning the collection or having the reference to the proxy is in
the detached state.

Sometimes a proxy or collection needs to be initialized before closing the Session . You can force initialization by
calling cat.getSex() or cat.getKittens().size() , for example. However, this can be confusing to readers of the code
and it is not convenient for generic code.

The static methods Hibernate.initialize() and Hibernate.isInitialized() , provide the application with a convenient
way of working with lazily initialized collections or proxies. Hibernate.initialize(cat) will force the initialization of a
proxy, cat , as long as its Session is still open. Hibernate.initialize( cat.getKittens() ) has a similar effect for the
collection of kittens.

Another option is to keep the Session open until all required collections and proxies have been loaded. In some
application architectures, particularly where the code that accesses data using Hibernate, and the code that uses
it are in different application layers or different physical processes, it can be a problem to ensure that the Session
is open when a collection is initialized. There are two basic ways to deal with this issue:

In a web-based application, a servlet filter can be used to close the Session only at the end of a user
request, once the rendering of the view is complete (the Open Session in View pattern). Of course, this places
heavy demands on the correctness of the exception handling of your application infrastructure. It is vitally
important that the Session is closed and the transaction ended before returning to the user, even when an
exception occurs during rendering of the view. See the Hibernate Wiki for examples of this "Open Session in
View" pattern.

In an application with a separate business tier, the business logic must "prepare" all collections that the web
tier needs before returning. This means that the business tier should load all the data and return all the data
already initialized to the presentation/web tier that is required for a particular use case. Usually, the
application calls Hibernate.initialize() for each collection that will be needed in the web tier (this call must
occur before the session is closed) or retrieves the collection eagerly using a Hibernate query with a FETCH
clause or a FetchMode.JOIN in Criteria . This is usually easier if you adopt the Command pattern instead of a
Session Facade.

You can also attach a previously loaded object to a new Session with merge() or lock() before accessing
uninitialized collections or other proxies. Hibernate does not, and certainly should not, do this automatically
since it would introduce impromptu transaction semantics.

Sometimes you do not want to initialize a large collection, but still need some information about it, like its size, for
example, or a subset of the data.

You can use a collection filter to get the size of a collection without initializing it:

( (Integer) s.createFilter( collection, "select count(*)" ).list().get(0) ).intValue()

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The createFilter() method is also used to efficiently retrieve subsets of a collection without needing to initialize
the whole collection:

s.createFilter( lazyCollection, "").setFirstResult(0).setMaxResults(10).list();

20.1.5. Using batch fetching

Using batch fetching, Hibernate can load several uninitialized proxies if one proxy is accessed. Batch fetching is an
optimization of the lazy select fetching strategy. There are two ways you can configure batch fetching: on the class
level and the collection level.

Batch fetching for classes/entities is easier to understand. Consider the following example: at runtime you have 25
Cat instances loaded in a Session , and each Cat has a reference to its owner , a Person . The Person class is
mapped with a proxy, lazy="true" . If you now iterate through all cats and call getOwner() on each, Hibernate
will, by default, execute 25 SELECT statements to retrieve the proxied owners. You can tune this behavior by
specifying a batch-size in the mapping of Person :

<class name="Person" batch-size="10">...</class>

Hibernate will now execute only three queries: the pattern is 10, 10, 5.

You can also enable batch fetching of collections. For example, if each Person has a lazy collection of Cat s, and
10 persons are currently loaded in the Session , iterating through all persons will generate 10 SELECT s, one for
every call to getCats() . If you enable batch fetching for the cats collection in the mapping of Person , Hibernate
can pre-fetch collections:

<class name="Person">

<set name="cats" batch-size="3">

...

</set>

</class>

With a batch-size of 3, Hibernate will load 3, 3, 3, 1 collections in four SELECT s. Again, the value of the attribute
depends on the expected number of uninitialized collections in a particular Session .

Batch fetching of collections is particularly useful if you have a nested tree of items, i.e. the typical bill-of-materials
pattern. However, a nested set or a materialized path might be a better option for read-mostly trees.

20.1.6. Using subselect fetching

If one lazy collection or single-valued proxy has to be fetched, Hibernate will load all of them, re-running the
original query in a subselect. This works in the same way as batch-fetching but without the piecemeal loading.

20.1.7. Fetch profiles

Another way to affect the fetching strategy for loading associated objects is through something called a fetch
profile, which is a named configuration associated with the org.hibernate.SessionFactory but enabled, by name,
on the org.hibernate.Session . Once enabled on a org.hibernate.Session , the fetch profile wull be in affect for that
org.hibernate.Session until it is explicitly disabled.

So what does that mean? Well lets explain that by way of an example. Say we have the following mappings:

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<hibernate-mapping>

<class name="Customer">

...

<set name="orders" inverse="true">

<key column="cust_id"/>

<one-to-many class="Order"/>

</set>

</class>

<class name="Order">

...

</class>

</hibernate-mapping>

Now normally when you get a reference to a particular customer, that customer's set of orders will be lazy
meaning we will not yet have loaded those orders from the database. Normally this is a good thing. Now lets say
that you have a certain use case where it is more efficient to load the customer and their orders together. One
way certainly is to use "dynamic fetching" strategies via an HQL or criteria queries. But another option is to use a
fetch profile to achieve that. Just add the following to your mapping:

<hibernate-mapping>

...

<fetch-profile name="customer-with-orders">

<fetch entity="Customer" association="orders" style="join"/>

</fetch-profile>

</hibernate-mapping>

or even:

<hibernate-mapping>

<class name="Customer">

...

<fetch-profile name="customer-with-orders">

<fetch association="orders" style="join"/>

</fetch-profile>

</class>

...

</hibernate-mapping>

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Now the following code will actually load both the customer and their orders:

Session session = ...;

session.enableFetchProfile( "customer-with-orders" ); // name matches from mapping

Customer customer = (Customer) session.get( Customer.class, customerId );

Currently only join style fetch profiles are supported, but they plan is to support additional styles. See HHH-3414
for details.

20.1.8. Using lazy property fetching

Hibernate3 supports the lazy fetching of individual properties. This optimization technique is also known as fetch
groups. Please note that this is mostly a marketing feature; optimizing row reads is much more important than
optimization of column reads. However, only loading some properties of a class could be useful in extreme cases.
For example, when legacy tables have hundreds of columns and the data model cannot be improved.

To enable lazy property loading, set the lazy attribute on your particular property mappings:

<class name="Document">

<id name="id">

<generator class="native"/>

</id>

<property name="name" not-null="true" length="50"/>

<property name="summary" not-null="true" length="200" lazy="true"/>

<property name="text" not-null="true" length="2000" lazy="true"/>

</class>

Lazy property loading requires buildtime bytecode instrumentation. If your persistent classes are not enhanced,
Hibernate will ignore lazy property settings and return to immediate fetching.

For bytecode instrumentation, use the following Ant task:

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<target name="instrument" depends="compile">

<taskdef name="instrument" classname="org.hibernate.tool.instrument.InstrumentTask">

<classpath path="${jar.path}"/>

<classpath path="${classes.dir}"/>

<classpath refid="lib.class.path"/>

</taskdef>

<instrument verbose="true">

<fileset dir="${testclasses.dir}/org/hibernate/auction/model">

<include name="*.class"/>

</fileset>

</instrument>

</target>

A different way of avoiding unnecessary column reads, at least for read-only transactions, is to use the projection
features of HQL or Criteria queries. This avoids the need for buildtime bytecode processing and is certainly a
preferred solution.

You can force the usual eager fetching of properties using fetch all properties in HQL.

20.2. The Second Level Cache

A Hibernate Session is a transaction-level cache of persistent data. It is possible to configure a cluster or JVM-
level ( SessionFactory -level) cache on a class-by-class and collection-by-collection basis. You can even plug in a
clustered cache. Be aware that caches are not aware of changes made to the persistent store by another
application. They can, however, be configured to regularly expire cached data.

You have the option to tell Hibernate which caching implementation to use by specifying the name of a class that
implements org.hibernate.cache.CacheProvider using the property hibernate.cache.provider_class . Hibernate is
bundled with a number of built-in integrations with the open-source cache providers that are listed below. You
can also implement your own and plug it in as outlined above. Note that versions prior to 3.2 use EhCache as the
default cache provider.

Table 20.1. Cache Providers

Query
Cluster Cache
Cache Provider class Type Safe Supported

Hashtable org.hibernate.cache.HashtableCacheProvider memory yes

(not
intended for
production
use)

EHCache org.hibernate.cache.EhCacheProvider memory, yes

disk

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 Query
Cluster Cache
Cache Provider class Type Safe Supported

OSCache org.hibernate.cache.OSCacheProvider memory, yes

disk

SwarmCache org.hibernate.cache.SwarmCacheProvider clustered (ip yes

multicast) (clustered
invalidation)

JBoss Cache org.hibernate.cache.TreeCacheProvider clustered (ip yes yes (clock

1.x multicast), (replication) sync req.)
transactional

JBoss Cache org.hibernate.cache.jbc.JBossCacheRegionFactory clustered (ip yes yes (clock

2 multicast), (replication sync req.)
transactional or
invalidation)

20.2.1. Cache mappings

The <cache> element of a class or collection mapping has the following form:

<cache
usage="tra nsactional|read-write|nonstrict-read-write|read-only"
region="Re gionName"
include="a ll|non-lazy"
/>

usage (required) specifies the caching strategy: transactional , read-write , nonstrict-read-write or

read-only

region (optional: defaults to the class or collection role name): specifies the name of the second level
cache region

include (optional: defaults to all ) non-lazy : specifies that properties of the entity mapped with
lazy="true" cannot be cached when attribute-level lazy fetching is enabled

Alternatively, you can specify <class-cache> and <collection-cache> elements in hibernate.cfg.xml .

The usage attribute specifies a cache concurrency strategy.

20.2.2. Strategy: read only

If your application needs to read, but not modify, instances of a persistent class, a read-only cache can be used.
This is the simplest and optimal performing strategy. It is even safe for use in a cluster.

<class name="eg.Immutable" mutable="false">

<cache usage="read-only"/>

....

</class>

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20.2.3. Strategy: read/write
If the application needs to update data, a read-write cache might be appropriate. This cache strategy should
never be used if serializable transaction isolation level is required. If the cache is used in a JTA environment, you
must specify the property hibernate.transaction.manager_lookup_class and naming a strategy for obtaining the JTA
TransactionManager . In other environments, you should ensure that the transaction is completed when
Session.close() or Session.disconnect() is called. If you want to use this strategy in a cluster, you should ensure
that the underlying cache implementation supports locking. The built-in cache providers do not support locking.

<class name="eg.Cat" .... >

<cache usage="read-write"/>

....

<set name="kittens" ... >

<cache usage="read-write"/>

....

</set>

</class>

20.2.4. Strategy: nonstrict read/write

If the application only occasionally needs to update data (i.e. if it is extremely unlikely that two transactions would
try to update the same item simultaneously), and strict transaction isolation is not required, a nonstrict-read-write
cache might be appropriate. If the cache is used in a JTA environment, you must specify
hibernate.transaction.manager_lookup_class . In other environments, you should ensure that the transaction is
completed when Session.close() or Session.disconnect() is called.

20.2.5. Strategy: transactional

The transactional cache strategy provides support for fully transactional cache providers such as JBoss
TreeCache. Such a cache can only be used in a JTA environment and you must specify
hibernate.transaction.manager_lookup_class .

20.2.6. Cache-provider/concurrency-strategy compatibility

Important
None of the cache providers support all of the cache concurrency strategies.

The following table shows which providers are compatible with which concurrency strategies.

Table 20.2. Cache Concurrency Strategy Support

read- nonstrict-read- read-

Cache only write write transactional

Hashtable (not intended for production yes yes yes

use)

EHCache yes yes yes

OSCache yes yes yes

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 read- nonstrict-read- read-
Cache only write write transactional

SwarmCache yes yes

JBoss Cache 1.x yes yes

JBoss Cache 2 yes yes

20.3. Managing the caches

Whenever you pass an object to save() , update() or saveOrUpdate() , and whenever you retrieve an object
using load() , get() , list() , iterate() or scroll() , that object is added to the internal cache of the Session .

When flush() is subsequently called, the state of that object will be synchronized with the database. If you do not
want this synchronization to occur, or if you are processing a huge number of objects and need to manage
memory efficiently, the evict() method can be used to remove the object and its collections from the first-level
cache.

ScrollableResult cats = sess.createQuery("from Cat as cat").scroll(); //a huge result set

while ( cats.next() ) {

Cat cat = (Cat) cats.get(0);

doSomethingWithACat(cat);

sess.evict(cat);

The Session also provides a contains() method to determine if an instance belongs to the session cache.

To evict all objects from the session cache, call Session.clear()

For the second-level cache, there are methods defined on SessionFactory for evicting the cached state of an
instance, entire class, collection instance or entire collection role.

sessionFactory.evict(Cat.class, catId); //evict a particular Cat

sessionFactory.evict(Cat.class); //evict all Cats

sessionFactory.evictCollection("Cat.kittens", catId); //evict a particular collection of kittens

sessionFactory.evictCollection("Cat.kittens"); //evict all kitten collections

The CacheMode controls how a particular session interacts with the second-level cache:

CacheMode.NORMAL : will read items from and write items to the second-level cache

CacheMode.GET : will read items from the second-level cache. Do not write to the second-level cache except
when updating data

CacheMode.PUT : will write items to the second-level cache. Do not read from the second-level cache

CacheMode.REFRESH : will write items to the second-level cache. Do not read from the second-level cache.
Bypass the effect of hibernate.cache.use_minimal_puts forcing a refresh of the second-level cache for all
items read from the database

To browse the contents of a second-level or query cache region, use the Statistics API:

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Map cacheEntries = sessionFactory.getStatistics()

.getSecondLevelCacheStatistics(regionName)

.getEntries();

You will need to enable statistics and, optionally, force Hibernate to keep the cache entries in a more readable
format:

hibernate.generate_statistics true
hibernate.cache.use_structured_entries true

20.4. The Query Cache

Query result sets can also be cached. This is only useful for queries that are run frequently with the same
parameters.

20.4.1. Enabling query caching

Caching of query results introduces some overhead in terms of your applications normal transactional processing.
For example, if you cache results of a query against Person Hibernate will need to keep track of when those
results should be invalidated because changes have been committed against Person. That, coupled with the fact
that most applications simply gain no benefit from caching query results, leads Hibernate to disable caching of
query results by default. To use query caching, you will first need to enable the query cache:

hibernate.cache.use_query_cache true

This setting creates two new cache regions:

org.hibernate.cache.StandardQueryCache , holding the cached query results

org.hibernate.cache.UpdateTimestampsCache , holding timestamps of the most recent updates to queryable

tables. These are used to validate the results as they are served from the query cache.

Important
If you configure your underlying cache implementation to use expiry or timeouts is very important that the cache
timeout of the underlying cache region for the UpdateTimestampsCache be set to a higher value than the
timeouts of any of the query caches. In fact, we recommend that the the UpdateTimestampsCache region not be
configured for expiry at all. Note, in particular, that an LRU cache expiry policy is never appropriate.

As mentioned above, most queries do not benefit from caching or their results. So by default, individual queries
are not cached even after enabling query caching. To enable results caching for a particular query, call
org.hibernate.Query.setCacheable(true) . This call allows the query to look for existing cache results or add its
results to the cache when it is executed.

Note
The query cache does not cache the state of the actual entities in the cache; it caches only identifier values and
results of value type. For this reaso, the query cache should always be used in conjunction with the second-level
cache for those entities expected to be cached as part of a query result cache (just as with collection caching).

20.4.2. Query cache regions

If you require fine-grained control over query cache expiration policies, you can specify a named cache region for
a particular query by calling Query.setCacheRegion() .

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List blogs = sess.createQuery("from Blog blog where blog.blogger = :blogger")

.setEntity("blogger", blogger)

.setMaxResults(15)

.setCacheable(true)

.setCacheRegion("frontpages")

.list();

If you want to force the query cache to refresh one of its regions (disregard any cached results it finds there) you
can use org.hibernate.Query.setCacheMode(CacheMode.REFRESH) . In conjunction with the region you have defined
for the given query, Hibernate will selectively force the results cached in that particular region to be refreshed.
This is particularly useful in cases where underlying data may have been updated via a separate process and is a
far more efficient alternative to bulk eviction of the region via org.hibernate.SessionFactory.evictQueries() .

20.5. Understanding Collection performance

In the previous sections we have covered collections and their applications. In this section we explore some more
issues in relation to collections at runtime.

20.5.1. Taxonomy
Hibernate defines three basic kinds of collections:

collections of values

one-to-many associations

many-to-many associations

This classification distinguishes the various table and foreign key relationships but does not tell us quite
everything we need to know about the relational model. To fully understand the relational structure and
performance characteristics, we must also consider the structure of the primary key that is used by Hibernate to
update or delete collection rows. This suggests the following classification:

indexed collections

sets

bags

All indexed collections (maps, lists, and arrays) have a primary key consisting of the <key> and <index>
columns. In this case, collection updates are extremely efficient. The primary key can be efficiently indexed and a
particular row can be efficiently located when Hibernate tries to update or delete it.

Sets have a primary key consisting of <key> and element columns. This can be less efficient for some types of
collection element, particularly composite elements or large text or binary fields, as the database may not be able
to index a complex primary key as efficiently. However, for one-to-many or many-to-many associations,
particularly in the case of synthetic identifiers, it is likely to be just as efficient. If you want SchemaExport to
actually create the primary key of a <set> , you must declare all columns as not-null="true" .

<idbag> mappings define a surrogate key, so they are efficient to update. In fact, they are the best case.

Bags are the worst case since they permit duplicate element values and, as they have no index column, no primary
key can be defined. Hibernate has no way of distinguishing between duplicate rows. Hibernate resolves this
problem by completely removing in a single DELETE and recreating the collection whenever it changes. This can
be inefficient.

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For a one-to-many association, the "primary key" may not be the physical primary key of the database table. Even
in this case, the above classification is still useful. It reflects how Hibernate "locates" individual rows of the
collection.

20.5.2. Lists, maps, idbags and sets are the most efficient collections to update
From the discussion above, it should be clear that indexed collections and sets allow the most efficient operation
in terms of adding, removing and updating elements.

There is, arguably, one more advantage that indexed collections have over sets for many-to-many associations or
collections of values. Because of the structure of a Set , Hibernate does not UPDATE a row when an element is
"changed". Changes to a Set always work via INSERT and DELETE of individual rows. Once again, this
consideration does not apply to one-to-many associations.

After observing that arrays cannot be lazy, you can conclude that lists, maps and idbags are the most performant
(non-inverse) collection types, with sets not far behind. You can expect sets to be the most common kind of
collection in Hibernate applications. This is because the "set" semantics are most natural in the relational model.

However, in well-designed Hibernate domain models, most collections are in fact one-to-many associations with
inverse="true" . For these associations, the update is handled by the many-to-one end of the association, and so
considerations of collection update performance simply do not apply.

20.5.3. Bags and lists are the most efficient inverse collections
There is a particular case, however, in which bags, and also lists, are much more performant than sets. For a
collection with inverse="true" , the standard bidirectional one-to-many relationship idiom, for example, we can
add elements to a bag or list without needing to initialize (fetch) the bag elements. This is because, unlike a set ,
Collection.add() or Collection.addAll() must always return true for a bag or List . This can make the following
common code much faster:

Parent p = (Parent) sess.load(Parent.class, id);

Child c = new Child();

c.setParent(p);

p.getChildren().add(c); //no need to fetch the collection!

sess.flush();

20.5.4. One shot delete

Deleting collection elements one by one can sometimes be extremely inefficient. Hibernate knows not to do that
in the case of an newly-empty collection (if you called list.clear() , for example). In this case, Hibernate will issue a
single DELETE .

Suppose you added a single element to a collection of size twenty and then remove two elements. Hibernate will
issue one INSERT statement and two DELETE statements, unless the collection is a bag. This is certainly
desirable.

However, suppose that we remove eighteen elements, leaving two and then add thee new elements. There are
two possible ways to proceed

delete eighteen rows one by one and then insert three rows

remove the whole collection in one SQL DELETE and insert all five current elements one by one

Hibernate cannot know that the second option is probably quicker. It would probably be undesirable for
Hibernate to be that intuitive as such behavior might confuse database triggers, etc.

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Fortunately, you can force this behavior (i.e. the second strategy) at any time by discarding (i.e. dereferencing) the
original collection and returning a newly instantiated collection with all the current elements.

One-shot-delete does not apply to collections mapped inverse="true" .

20.6. Monitoring performance

Optimization is not much use without monitoring and access to performance numbers. Hibernate provides a full
range of figures about its internal operations. Statistics in Hibernate are available per SessionFactory .

20.6.1. Monitoring a SessionFactory

You can access SessionFactory metrics in two ways. Your first option is to call sessionFactory.getStatistics() and
read or display the Statistics yourself.

Hibernate can also use JMX to publish metrics if you enable the StatisticsService MBean. You can enable a single
MBean for all your SessionFactory or one per factory. See the following code for minimalistic configuration
examples:

// MBean service registration for a specific SessionFactory

Hashtable tb = new Hashtable();

tb.put("type", "statistics");

tb.put("sessionFactory", "myFinancialApp");

ObjectName on = new ObjectName("hibernate", tb); // MBean object name

StatisticsService stats = new StatisticsService(); // MBean implementation

stats.setSessionFactory(sessionFactory); // Bind the stats to a SessionFactory

server.registerMBean(stats, on); // Register the Mbean on the server

// MBean service registration for all SessionFactory's

Hashtable tb = new Hashtable();

tb.put("type", "statistics");

tb.put("sessionFactory", "all");

ObjectName on = new ObjectName("hibernate", tb); // MBean object name

StatisticsService stats = new StatisticsService(); // MBean implementation

server.registerMBean(stats, on); // Register the MBean on the server

You can activate and deactivate the monitoring for a SessionFactory :

at configuration time, set hibernate.generate_statistics to false

at runtime: sf.getStatistics().setStatisticsEnabled(true) or hibernateStatsBean.setStatisticsEnabled(true)

Statistics can be reset programmatically using the clear() method. A summary can be sent to a logger (info level)
using the logSummary() method.

20.6.2. Metrics

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Hibernate provides a number of metrics, from basic information to more specialized information that is only
relevant in certain scenarios. All available counters are described in the Statistics interface API, in three
categories:

Metrics related to the general Session usage, such as number of open sessions, retrieved JDBC
connections, etc.

Metrics related to the entities, collections, queries, and caches as a whole (aka global metrics).

Detailed metrics related to a particular entity, collection, query or cache region.

For example, you can check the cache hit, miss, and put ratio of entities, collections and queries, and the average
time a query needs. Be aware that the number of milliseconds is subject to approximation in Java. Hibernate is
tied to the JVM precision and on some platforms this might only be accurate to 10 seconds.

Simple getters are used to access the global metrics (i.e. not tied to a particular entity, collection, cache region,
etc.). You can access the metrics of a particular entity, collection or cache region through its name, and through its
HQL or SQL representation for queries. Please refer to the Statistics , EntityStatistics , CollectionStatistics ,
SecondLevelCacheStatistics , and QueryStatistics API Javadoc for more information. The following code is a simple
example:

Statistics stats = HibernateUtil.sessionFactory.getStatistics();

double queryCacheHitCount = stats.getQueryCacheHitCount();

double queryCacheMissCount = stats.getQueryCacheMissCount();

double queryCacheHitRatio =

queryCacheHitCount / (queryCacheHitCount + queryCacheMissCount);

log.info("Query Hit ratio:" + queryCacheHitRatio);

EntityStatistics entityStats =

stats.getEntityStatistics( Cat.class.getName() );

long changes =

entityStats.getInsertCount()

+ entityStats.getUpdateCount()

+ entityStats.getDeleteCount();

log.info(Cat.class.getName() + " changed " + changes + "times" );

You can work on all entities, collections, queries and region caches, by retrieving the list of names of entities,
collections, queries and region caches using the following methods: getQueries() , getEntityNames() ,
getCollectionRoleNames() , and getSecondLevelCacheRegionNames() .

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