Question

In Oracle we can create an update query that will return the updated record using the RETURNING clause.

Is there similar functionality in Hibernate?

Answer 1

Apart from database-generated values there is obviously no need for Hibernate to return the updated instance because the object passed to Session.saveOrUpdate() is the updated instance. Database-generated values (sequence, trigger, defaults, etc.) will be set after Session.saveOrUpdate if they are accordingly annotated (or defined in a XML mapping file).

For identifier values use the JPA @javax.persistence.GeneratedValue annotation in conjunction with the JPA @javax.persistence.Id annotation. For simple properties use the native Hibernate @org.hibernate.annotations.Generated annotation (afaik there is no according JPA annotation).

How generated identifier values are retrieved by Hibernate depends on the generation strategy and/or the database dialect. For simple properties Hibernate executes an additional SELECT by id statement after the INSERT or UPDATE.