Can I use the SQL keywork 'Left' in HQL

I want to run query

select distinct left(destCol,3) from TABLENAME where colName = 'IL';

When I use this in HQL like this >>

select distinct left(a.destCol, 3) from TABLENAME as a where a.colName = 'IL'

Hibernate is throwing error as ... 09:38:41,546 ERROR [STDERR] net.sf.hibernate.QueryException: undefined alias: left

Thanks.
--Anand

HQL doesn't support arbitrary SQL functions in the select clause, but you can enhance the Dialect class for your database.