Question

I want to know the conceptual difference between the above mentioned two methods of the hibernates sessionfactory class if poosible with simple example.

Answer 1

The former opens a normal (stateful) session, while the latter (probably not surprisingly) a stateless session.

According to the Javadoc, a stateless session is:

A command-oriented API for performing bulk operations against a database.

A stateless session does not implement a first-level cache nor interact with any second-level cache, nor does it implement transactional write-behind or automatic dirty checking, nor do operations cascade to associated instances. Collections are ignored by a stateless session. Operations performed via a stateless session bypass Hibernate’s event model and interceptors. Stateless sessions are vulnerable to data aliasing effects, due to the lack of a first-level cache.

For certain kinds of transactions, a stateless session may perform slightly faster than a stateful session.