If one has an entity such as:

@Entity
@Table(name="main")
public class MainEntity {

private int id;
private Code1 code1;
private Code2 code2;
private Code3 code3;

@Id
public int getId(){return id;}
public void setId(int pId){id = pId;}

@ManyToOne(targetEntity=Code1.class)
@JoinColumn(name="code1")
public int getCode1(){return code1;}
public void setCode1(Code2 pCode1){code1 = pCode1;}

@ManyToOne(targetEntity=Code2.class)
@JoinColumn(name="code2")
public int getCode2(){return code2;}
public void setCode2(Code2 pCode2){code2 = pCode2;}

@ManyToOne(targetEntity=Code3.class)
@JoinColumn(name="code3")
public int getCode3(){return code3;}
public void setCode3(Code3 pCode3){code3 = pCode3;}
}

while Code1, Code2 and Code3 are simple code-desc entities (having only to simple properties, code and desc), it is expected that if one tries to fetch all the MainEntity objects (using "Select a From MainEntity a" query, for example) there will be only one sql-select statement
(
SELECT m.id, m.code1, m.code2, m.code3, c1.code, c1.desc, c2.code, c2.desc, c3.code, c3.desc

FROM main m
LEFT OUTER JOIN code1 c1 ON m.code1 = c1.code
LEFT OUTER JOIN code2 c2 ON m.code2 = c2.code
LEFT OUTER JOIN code3 c3 ON m.code3 = c3.code
)

Instead, there are 3*n+1 sql-select statements (where n is the number of rows in the main table). One from the main table, and for each row, one from each codes table.

If one uses a query from

SELECT a FROM MainEntity a JOIN FETCH a.code1 JOIN FETCH a.code2 JOIN FETCH a.code3

it works correctly, using one sql-statements.
Is this a bug? how should it be fixed?

Hibernate version:3.1.rc2

Name and version of the database you are using:Oracle9i

this is the expected behavior, EJBQL ignores the fetching (select/join) strategy of the entities

So hibernate is supposed to execute more than 100 accesses to the DB if you fetch a table of 35 rows with three ManyToOne links? What happened to efficiency? If I have tables with several thousands rows, I can't use hibernate? Does it make sense?
Would you (the development team) like a ptach to change this behaviour?

select p from Person p left join fetch p.country left join fetch p.citizenship will do 1 query to load Person and 2 many to one

No, no patch is needed.