Delete lots (1000's) of records using Hibernate

[cobraflow]

I have a requirement to delete a large number of rows from a table. We use a SLSB, DAO and Hibernate on JBoss 3.2.5. We get an OutOfMemoryException when we try to delete a lot of records. The ideal would be to set Auto Commit on and execute super.getHibernateTemplate().delete("from myTable where ref='1234'") on our class that extends HibernateDaoSupport.

Any pointers would be useful

Thanks

Lewis