3.2. Instance States

The instance is not associated with any persistence context. It has no persistent identity or primary key value.

The instance is currently associated with a persistence context. It has a persistent identity (primary key value) and can have a corresponding row in the database. For a particular persistence context, Hibernate guarantees that persistent identity is equivalent to Java identity in relation to the in-memory location of the object.

The instance was once associated with a persistence context, but that context was closed, or the instance was serialized to another process. It has a persistent identity and can have a corresponding row in the database. For detached instances, Hibernate does not guarantee the relationship between persistent identity and Java identity.