JPA EntityManager.unwrap()-method

Last week I came in touch with the very useful

EntityManager.<T>unwrap(Class<T>)

-method from the javax.persistence-package. The method can be used to gain access of JPA-vendor-specific classes. At work, we are running Hibernate in “JPA-mode” which means we do only have access to methods that are provided by the EntityManager-interface. It was ok to us, until we wanted to get rid of those SELECT-statements that the EntityManager.merge()-method does before the UPDATE-statement is fired to the database. If we were running Hibernate in “Hibernate-mode” we wouldn’t have any problems at all: the EntityManager-equivalent Session-class offers a update()-method which fires only the UPDATE-Statement without any SELECTs. This is where the unwrap-method comes into play. Just fetch an EntityManager-instance via injection or create a new one on your own via EntityManagerFactory and place the following snippet into your code:

EntityManager em = ...
Session session = em.unwrap(Session.class);
//em.merge(myEntity);
session.update(myEntity);

Thanks to axtavt for his/her advice.