For the criteria API, I have a case where two tables each have a foreign key that is pointing to a parent table's id. I'd imagine that, for the sake of data integrity, it makes sense to also inner join the parent table when joining those two child tables on the parent's ID, but in my case it isn't really necessary--I'd imagine the query could be faster if the parent table wasn't involved at all. When I do this sorta thing with parent A and children B and C..

cb.equal(b.get(b_.a), c.get(c_.a))

.. an inner join is still done on the parent table, even though I don't need any other fields from that table. Is there a way to do this comparison without joining the parent table? Or does hibernate still join the parent table because the end user or their schema can't really be trusted?

The implicit joining is always done via INNER JOIN.

If you want a LEFT JOIN, you need to:

1. Express the JOIN explicitly in your Criteria/JPQL query.



2. Make sure to always check with: WHERE c IS NULL or c.id = :c.id as otherwise the SQL statement will be equivalent to an INNER JOIN anyway,

Also, if B and C don't have any join between them, they will end up in a Cartesian Product, so make sure your query is fetching data efficiently too.