[news.eclipse.rt.eclipselink] Cache not refreshing?

[Daniel Ortega <daniel.ortega@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone, I've just discovered a problem when updating one of my 
entities; let's see if someone can help out:

I have a OneToMany relationship in a class named Issue:

@OneToMany(mappedBy="issue", cascade = CascadeType.ALL, fetch = 
FetchType.LAZY)
@JoinTable(name="INCIDENCIA_ESTADO", joinColumns = @JoinColumn(name = 
"ID_INCIDENCIA", referencedColumnName = "ID_INCIDENCIA"))
@OrderBy ("startDate")
private List<StateAssignment> states;

Issue objects can pass through many states on their life cycle and we 
keep that information in the List name "states". The StateAssignment 
entity has some properties: relevant for us now are just startDate and 
endDate, both of them of type java.util.Date.

One issue can have only one state at a given time <=> only one of the 
states of that list can have its endDate set to null.


I'll try to explain how the problem shows:

I made my tests having one Issue object with two StateAssignments (one 
with endDate == null and the other not).

I add a new StatAssignment to my list (and put the last "active" 
assignment's endDate to a "new Date()") and call the merge() method on 
the EntityManager object.
That actually works fine, I can see how it updates the last 
StateAssignment and sets its endDate, and also inserts a new row on the 
table representing the new StateAssignment just added.

The problem comes when loading again that entity calling the find method 
of the EntityManager. The Issue object comes without the new 
StateAssignment (just the two original states on the list). Something 
curious about it is that neither of those StateAssignment objects come 
with their endDate set to null (remember one of them had it to null 
before the update), so my Issue object represents just the half of the 
update I just made.

It seems the StateAssignment objects are actually refreshing nice, but 
the List that represent the relationship on the Issue class isn't, and 
don't have any clue about it.

Maybe there's some way to force the EntityManager to load the Issue from 
database skipping the cache (I don't want to deactivate it at all, just 
force a fresh fetching for this case), or force the cache to be updated 
just when the Issue object changes ... don't know.

I know I can use the refresh(Object) method of the EntityManager that 
triggers a fresh read from DB but I don't know when this problem would 
happen, so I would have to use the refresh() method ALWAYS when reading 
from db and that would be the same as deactivating cache (I think).

Sorry for the length, but I though it was better to give you as many 
information as possible.

Thanks in advance for your help

Daniel