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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-24T12:45:00+00:00

Using NHibernate I usually query for single records using the Get() or Load() methods

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Using NHibernate I usually query for single records using the Get() or Load() methods (depending on if I need a proxy or not):

SomeEntity obj = session.Get<SomeEntity>(new PrimaryKeyId(1));

Now, if I execute this statement twice, like the example below, I only see one query being executed in my unittests:

SomeEntity obj1 = session.Get<SomeEntity>(new PrimaryKeyId(1));
SomeEntity obj2 = session.Get<SomeEntity>(new PrimaryKeyId(1));

So far, so good. But I noticed some strange behaviour when getting the same object using a ICriteria query. Check out my code below: I get the first object instance. I then change the value of a property to 10 (the value in the database is 8), get another instance and finally check the values of the second object instance.

//get the first object instance.
SomeEntity obj1 = session.CreateCriteria(typeof(SomeEntity))
                         .Add(Restrictions.Eq("Id", new PrimaryKeyId(1)))
                         .UniqueResult<SomeEntity>();

//the value in the database and the property is 8 at this point. Let's set it to 10.
obj1.SomeValue = 10;

//get the second object instance.
SomeEntity obj2 = session.CreateCriteria(typeof(SomeEntity))
                         .Add(Restrictions.Eq("Id", new PrimaryKeyId(1)))
                         .UniqueResult<SomeEntity>();

//check if the values match.
Assert.AreEqual(8, obj2.SomeValue);

Now, for some reason the assert fails, because the value is 10 of obj2 even though I asked for the object with a new query. the funny thing is, there are 2 exactly the same select queries being executed according to my unit test output window. My question: why are there 2 queries being executed if the second object is fetched from the first level cache?

Am I missing something or is this a bug?

Regards, Ted

edit #1: using NHibernate v2.1.2GA
edit #2: I added some extra explanation about the 2 queries being executed to the last paragraph.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Well, having learned a lot more about NHibernate I can now answer this question myself:
    The ICriteria query returns a list of objects fetched by NHibernate. NHibernate does not know which objects are returned until they are matched one by one with the object in the first level cache. If the item is already in the first level cache map the item read from the database is discarded. if it is not in the identity map, the item is put into the first level cache.

    Another “a-ha!” moment: suppose you run the query for the first time while there are 5 rows in the database all rows are fetched and put into first level cache. now over time 5 more records are added to the table and you rerun the query. Now all 10 records are fetched, but NHibernate sees 5 of them are already in the cache and will only add the 5 latter records. So basically you fetched 5 records for nothing (just to match the identifiers with the object identifiers in the identity map).

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