Can I write count(distinct po.compositeId) in hql?

when I do this, Hibernate reports a error:

net.sf.hibernate.QueryException: path expression ends in a composite value: collection1_.id [
select count(distinct collectionPO.id) from gov.ntcri.domain.po.collection.CollectionCreatorPO as creatorPO join creatorPO.collectionPO as collectionPO where creatorPO.creatorName like '%%'and collectionPO.isDeleted=0]
at net.sf.hibernate.hql.PathExpressionParser.getWhereColumn(PathExpressionParser.java:375)
at net.sf.hibernate.hql.SelectParser.token(SelectParser.java:160)
at net.sf.hibernate.hql.ClauseParser.token(ClauseParser.java:87)
at net.sf.hibernate.hql.ClauseParser.end(ClauseParser.java:114)
at net.sf.hibernate.hql.PreprocessingParser.end(PreprocessingParser.java:143)
at net.sf.hibernate.hql.ParserHelper.parse(ParserHelper.java:30)
at net.sf.hibernate.hql.QueryTranslator.compile(QueryTranslator.java:149)
at net.sf.hibernate.hql.QueryTranslator.compile(QueryTranslator.java:138)
at net.sf.hibernate.impl.SessionFactoryImpl.getQuery(SessionFactoryImpl.java:293)
at net.sf.hibernate.impl.SessionImpl.getQueries(SessionImpl.java:1561)
at net.sf.hibernate.impl.SessionImpl.find(SessionImpl.java:1532)
at net.sf.hibernate.impl.QueryImpl.list(QueryImpl.java:39)
at com.dsii.common.hibernate.HibernateUtils.getCount(HibernateUtils.java:297)
at gov.ntcri.domain.dao.collection.CollectionDAO.searchByCollectionCreatorName(CollectionDAO.java:301)
at gov.ntcri.domain.dao.collection.CollectionDAO.main(CollectionDAO.java:311)

Looks like you are doing sql not hql.

Why not get Hibernate session, then get reference to its' Connection then do straight jdbc via Statement.executeQuery() and pull the count(distinct) total from first row of ResultSet?