what is lazy fetching in hibernate?

Lazy setting decides whether to load child objects while loading the Parent Object.You need to do this setting respective hibernate mapping file of the parent class.Lazy = true (means not to load child)By default the lazy loading of the child objects is true. This make sure that the child objects are not loaded unless they are explicitly invoked in the application by calling getChild() method on parent.In this case hibernate issues a fresh database call to load the child when getChild() is actully called on the Parent object.But in some cases you do need to load the child objects when parent is loaded. Just make the lazy=false and hibernate will load the child when parent is loaded from the database.Exampleslazy=true (default)Address child of User class can be made lazy if it is not required frequently.lazy=falseBut you may need to load the Author object for Book parent whenever you deal with the book for online bookshop