Same post, with errors corrected.

In Beta 1, if you query for an Entity, detach that entity, and then use that entity as a reference in a new transient entity, the persist operation on the transient entity fails when cascading to the pre-existing entity with a org.hibernate.PersistentObjectException ("detached entity passed to persist").

This seems like the wrong thing to do -- here's an example:

// uses the EM to return a person. the person object will be detached here
Person owner = personDAO.getPerson(1);

Pet pet1 = new Pet();
pet1.setOwner(owner);

// should persist pet and the cascade to owner should not fail... how else would we persist pet?
petDAO.persist(pet1);

Stacktrace shows AbstractSaveEventListener.cascadeBeforeSave() calling .Cascade.cascade which eventually leads to CascadingAction$8.cascade and SessionImpl.persist().