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# Indirection

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An indirection object takes the place of an application object so the application object is not read from the database until it is needed. Using indirection allows TopLink to create stand-ins for related objects. This results in significant performance improvements, especially when the application requires the contents of only the retrieved object rather than all related objects.

Without indirection, each time the application retrieves a persistent object, it also retrieves all the objects referenced by that object. This may result in lower performance for some applications.

Note: Oracle strongly recommends that you use indirection in all situations.

TopLink provides several indirection models, such as proxy indirection, transparent indirection, and value holder indirection. TopLink also provides indirection support for EJB (see "Indirection and EJB").

See "Indirection" for more information.