I have a Person that has a Set of Addresses.

I need to find the Person using an HQL like this:

from com.oreilly.hh.Person as person
where upper(person.name) = upper(:person)

Now I want that the addresses load eagerly, so I set the outer-join = true.

<set name="addresses" inverse="true" outer-join="true">
<key column="PERSON_ID"/>
<one-to-many class="com.oreilly.hh.Address"/>
</set>

But I still find that eager-fetching does not happen. I find that immediate fetch does happen.

Now if I change the HQL to

from com.oreilly.hh.Person as person
left join fetch person.addresses
where upper(person.name) = upper(:person)

I see eager fetch happen.

My question is:

Is it that the HQL overrides the outer-join in the Person.hbm.xml mapping all together?

anybody faced such scenarios?

Maybe this is your problem:

http://www.hibernate.org/117.html#A18

"HQL queries always ignore the setting for outer-join defined in the mapping document. This setting applies only to associations fetched using get() or load(), Criteria queries, and graph navigation. If you need to enable eager fetching for a HQL query, use an explicit LEFT JOIN FETCH."

wonderful dennis, thanks a lot!