Summarizing what I discovered so far through different stackoverflow posts:
Persist
New
a) out of transaction: allowed. persist accomplished the task of saving both Parent and Child in one call.
b) in of transaction: allowed.
detached
a) out of transaction: allowed. will throw exception when trying to flush.
b) in of transaction: not allowed. will throw exception when trying to flush.
existing
a) out of transaction: allowed. will throw exception when trying to flush.
b) in of transaction: not allowed. will throw exception when trying to flush.
saveOrUpdate
new
a) out of transaction: allowed. will save.
b) in or transaction: allowed. will save.
detached
a) out of transaction: allowed. will update.
b) in of transaction: allowed. will update.
existing
a) out of transaction: allowed. will update.
b) in of transaction: allowed. will update.
save
new
a) out of transaction: allowed. will save. Not sure how can it be saved right away without transaction. save does not cascade to the child, i.e., only Parent is saved/inserted in the table.
b) in or transaction: allowed. will save.
detached
a) out of transaction: save() for a detached object will create a new row in the table.
b) in or transaction: not allowed. will throw exception.
existing
a) out of transaction: not sure what will happen.
b) in or transaction: not allowed. will throw exception.
update
new
a) out of transaction: not sure what will happen. should throw exception.
b) in or transaction: not sure what will happen. should throw exception.
detached
a) out of transaction: allowed. will update later during flush.
b) in or transaction: allowed. will update later during flush.
existing
a) out of transaction: allowed. will update later during flush.
b) in or transaction: allowed. will update later during flush.
merge
new
a) out of transaction: not sure what will happen.
b) in or transaction: if there is no persistent instance currently associated with the session, try to load it from the database, or create a new persistent instance.
detached
a) out of transaction: allowed. will update later during flush. return a copy.
b) in or transaction: allowed. will update later during flush. return a copy.
existing
a) out of transaction: allowed. will update later during flush. return a copy.
b) in or transaction: allowed. will update later during flush. return a copy.
For Entities with assigned identifier :
save(): It returns an entity's identifier immediately. Since the identifier is already assigned to entity before calling save, so insert is not fired immediately. It is fired at session flush time.
persist() : same as save. It also fire insert at flush time.
Please verify whether understanding is correct.
Hibernate persist() vs save() method Hibernate saveOrUpdate vs update vs save/persist Hibernate persist vs save What's the advantage of persist() vs save() in Hibernate? http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/core/3.6/reference/en-US/html/objectstate.html