struts - hibernate doubt

Hello.

I'm developing a web application using Struts 1.0 and Hibernate (I'm a beginner). I've been reading your web and I've seen that in the Struts Action methods you use an Hibernate Plugin in this way:

public ActionForward myMethod (.......){ ServletContext context = request.getSession().getServletContext(); SessionFactory _factory = (SessionFactory);
context.getAttribute(HibernatePlugIn.SESSIONFACTORYKEY); Session session = _factory.openSession(); Transaction tx = session.beginTransaction(); //... do session stuff tx.commit(); session.flush(); session.close(); ...

What is the difference between doing this and this other?

public ActionForward myMethod (.......){

    Session session = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().getCurrentSession();
       Transaction tx = session.beginTransaction();
        //... do session stuff 
        tx.commit();
      .....

Some questions: 1.- What is the best option? 2.- I've read that it's not necessary to close Hibernate session nor flush the session if you use .getCurrentSession(). Is it true?

Thanks in advance.