12.8.3. Lazy loading Process

Lazy loading is the other half of eager loading. If a field is not eager loaded, it must be lazy loaded. When an access to an unloaded field of a bean is made, JBoss loads the field and all the fields of any lazy-load-group the field belong to. JBoss performs a set join and then removes any field that is already loaded. An example configuration is shown below.

<jbosscmp-jdbc>
    <enterprise-beans>
        <entity>
            <ejb-name>GangsterEJB</ejb-name>
            <!-- ... -->
            <load-groups>
                <load-group>
                    <load-group-name>basic</load-group-name>
                    <field-name>name</field-name>
                    <field-name>nickName</field-name>
                    <field-name>badness</field-name>
                </load-group>
                <load-group>
                    <load-group-name>contact info</load-group-name>
                    <field-name>nickName</field-name>
                    <field-name>contactInfo</field-name>
                    <field-name>hangout</field-name>
                </load-group>
            </load-groups>
            <!-- ... -->
            <lazy-load-groups>
                <load-group-name>basic</load-group-name>
                <load-group-name>contact info</load-group-name>
            </lazy-load-groups>
        </entity>
    </enterprise-beans>
</jbosscmp-jdbc>

When the bean provider calls getName() with this configuration, JBoss loads name, nickName and badness, assuming they are not already loaded. When the bean provider calls getNickName(), the name, nickName, badness, contactInfo, and hangout are loaded. A detailed description of the lazy loading process follows:

All data in the preload cache for this entity is loaded into the fields.
If the field value was loaded by the preload cache the lazy load process is finished.
JBoss finds all of the lazy load groups that contain this field, performs a set join on the groups, and removes any field that has already been loaded.
A query is executed to select the necessary columns. As in the basic load process, JBoss may load a block of entities. The data for the current entity is stored in the context and the data for the other entities is stored in the preload cache.