spring - LazyInitializationException while updating Entity in database -

i have 3 entities employee, person , emailadress given below:

@entity public class employee {     private person person;      //other data members      @manytoone(fetch=fetchtype.lazy, cascade = cascadetype.merge)     @joincolumn(name="person_id")     public partner getperson() {         return person;     }      //other getter , setters }  @entity public class person {     private set<emailaddress> emails;      //other data members      @onetomany(fetch=fetchtype.lazy, mappedby="person", cascade=cascadetype.all)     public set<emailaddress> getemails() {         return emails;     }      public void setemails(set<emailaddress> emails) {         this.emails = emails;         for(emailaddress email : this.emails) {           email.setperson(this);         }     }      //other getter , setters }  @entity public class emailaddress {     private person person;     private string email;     private string emailtype;      //getter , setter      @manytoone(fetch=fetchtype.eager)     @joincolumn(name="partner_id")     public partner getperson() {         return person;     } } 

and employeedao performs save, updates, delete operation on employee entity.

@repository("employeedao") @transactional public class employeedao {      public employee saveorupdate(employee emp) {         try {             return (employee) sessionfactory.getcurrentsession().merge(emp);         } catch(exception excp) {             //handle exception         }          return null;     }      //other methods } 

this saveorupdate() in employeedao save employee entity db without problem, when use same saveorupdate() update employee, fails lazyinitializationexception. following employeedaotest:

//test class public class employeedaotest extends abstracttestngspringcontexttests {      @autowired     private employeedao employeedao;      private employee createdummyemployee() {         // create dummy employee initialized person , emailaddress          return employee;     }      @test     public void testsaveorupdate() {         employee emp = createdummyemployee();          //test save/insert         employee savedemp = employeedao.saveorupdate(emp);         assert.assertnotnull(savedemp);     //works fine. employee gets saved correctly          //test update         savedemp.getperson().setname("updated name");         employee updatedemp = employeedao.saveorupdate(savedemp);         assert.assertnotnull(updatedemp);   // fails... because of "org.hibernate.lazyinitializationexception: not initialize proxy - no session"     } } 

i did little bit of googling before posting question here. , figured out there 2 ways fix it:

1. don't use lazy initialization i.e lazy=false. approach has own implication. , can't use approach because of performance issue.

2. use @persistencecontext(type = persistencecontexttype.extended). solves problem, think, approach spring not manage entitymanager/transactionmanager , have manage these myself. there way spring manage entitymanager/transactionmanager approach don't have manage myself.

or there better approach fix problem?

inside test method 2 separate sessions created, , when attempting update getperson fails due lazyinitializatin....

you should annotate method @transactional maintain same persistent context on whole test method.

import rg.springframework.transaction.annotation.transactional ...     @test     @transactional     public void testsaveorupdate() { 

similarly, in real business code, whenever access dao multiple times inside method, method should annotate transactional maintain context. of course side effect is, whole method logic fail if 1 of dao operations fails demannded bahaviour.