Question

    @Entity
    public class Person {

        @ElementCollection
        private List<Location> locations;

        [...]

    }

    @Embeddable
    public class Location {

        private Integer dummy;

        private Date creationDate;

        [...]

    }

Given the following structure, I’d like to perform the HQL or CriteriaQuery equivalent of the following SQL:

SELECT
    l.*
FROM
    Location l
INNER JOIN
    Person p ON (p.id = l.person_id)
WHERE
    p.id = ? AND l.creationDate > ?

I want to get back a list of Locations that are associated with the given person and whose creationDate is after the given one.

Thanks in advance!

Mark

Edit***: I have edited the SQL, as it was kinda misleading. I don’t want to query for the locations independently.

Answer 1

This is not possible, you cannot query an Embeddable. From the JPA Wikibook:

Embedded Collections

An ElementCollection mapping can be
used to define a collection of
Embeddable objects. This is not a
typical usage of Embeddable objects
as the objects are not embedded in the
source object’s table, but stored in a
separate collection table. This is
similar to a OneToMany, except the
target object is an Embeddable
instead of an Entity. This allows
collections of simple objects to be
easily defined, without requiring the
simple objects to define an Id or
ManyToOne inverse mapping.
ElementCollection can also override
the mappings, or table for their
collection, so you can have multiple
entities reference the same Embeddable
class, but have each store their
dependent objects in a separate table.

The limitations of using an
ElementCollection instead of a
OneToMany is that the target
objects cannot be queried,
persisted, merged independently of
their parent object. They are strictly
privately-owned (dependent) objects,
the same as an Embedded mapping.
There is no cascade option on an
ElementCollection, the target
objects are always persisted, merged,
removed with their parent.
ElementCollection still can use a
fetch type and defaults to LAZY the
same as other collection mappings.

To achieve what you want, use a OneToMany and an Entity instead of an ElementCollection and an Embeddable. Or change your approach and query the Person.