at: http://forum.hibernate.org/viewtopic.php?t=952785&highlight=eager it is stated that you can only eagerly fetch a single association.
So:

Would only actually retrieve one relation.

However, in the documentation (page 93 of the pdf), it says that the above query would actually fetch both associations.

I have a strong feeling though that you can indeed only get one relation. So is the documentation wrong?

As others (including me) had found...only one list/set/bag can be fetched, but for the number of many-to-one is restricted only bu max-fetch-depth...

AFAIK :)

Then the documentation is incorrect on this?? it's very confusing.

Also, I don't understand _why_ this is. I understand we can't do multiple joins, but if I want an association to get loaded, it could always do a select afterwards.

Now I have to do a lot more on my DAO..

thnx though!

If the associated entity is not lazy, then a separate select will be issued right after the main select. Also if the collection has lazy=false, it will also issue a separate select right after. If you want them to be lazy (and probably you want) you can for initialization ussing session.Initialize or issue a new query in order to fetch the associations (yeah, I know it complicates one's life).

I think that a good solution would be to add some new features to query and criteria, smth like:

from a inner join immediate a.collection
or
criteria.SetFetchMode( "collection", FetchMode.Immediate )

Thees two would instruct NH to issue a select immediatly after fetching the result, regardless of "lazy" or "fetch" configuration in mappings.

PS: What would you say sergey :) ?

i'm with you on this one.. Although I thought that Eager would mean exactly that.

In my scenario the relation ship is mapped lazy, but the dao gets an enumeration that states the fetchpath.. So in the specific case, the user needs the association fetched and ready to go.

wow, i'm sorry dado, but I'm still not getting it exactly..

I am fetching a list of objects.. each of these objects have an association that needs to be fetched. Does this mean that the best practice here is to iterate the list and call nhibernateutil.initialize ??

Hmm, in your case I think that the best thing is to re-query for the needed data.

Document d = new Criteria(typeof(Document))
// here get all needed many-to-one associations
.SetFetchMode( "Author", FetchMode.Join )
.SetFetchMode( "Category", FetchMode.Join )
// here get the collection (in rare cases I need more than a collection though)
.SetFetchMode( "Pages", FetchMode.Join )
.Add(Expression.Like("Name", "John"));

// perform a new criteria for the other associations
d = new Criteria(typeof(Document))
.SetFetchMode( "Readers", FetchMode.Join )
.Add(Expression.Like("Name", "John"));

this will result in two selects...

About the initialize, I think I was mistaken as it will only initialize the given argument (not the elements just the collection)..

What do you think?

I've been thinking about it, but I don't understand why doing it this way is more efficient then doing a nhibernateutil.initialize.
In your solution you probably have to attach the association yourself, is that right?

the initialize should result in only one extra select as well.

Well, calling session.Initialize on N objects will result in N selects. Moreover, calling session.Initialize in a many-to-many association will not initialize the collection content AFAIK if the elements are lazy (will only get the list of ID's from the DB). In contrast, issuing another query will FetchMode.Join will issue one select for all N objects...

Correct ?

that would be awesome.. I will try to look into this when i get the time (Usecases getting in the way ;-( )