java - Detach an entity from JPA/EJB3 persistence context

Question

What would be the easiest way to detach a specific JPA Entity Bean that was acquired through an EntityManager. Alternatively, could I have a query return detached objects in the first place so they would essentially act as 'read only'?

The reason why I want to do this is becuase I want to modify the data within the bean - with in my application only, but not ever have it persisted to the database. In my program, I eventually have to call flush() on the EntityManager, which would persist all changes from attached entities to the underyling database, but I want to exclude specific objects.

Answer 1

(may be too late to answer, but can be useful for others)

I'm developing my first system with JPA right now. Unfortunately I'm faced with this problem when this system is almost complete.

Simply put. Use Hibernate, or wait for JPA 2.0.

In Hibernate, you can use 'session.evict(object)' to remove one object from session. In JPA 2.0, in draft right now, there is the 'EntityManager.detach(object)' method to detach one object from persistence context.