Hi guys,
i think i have figured it out. Actually it is documented on this page :
http://www.hibernate.org/117.html
The left join fetch on a set ( one to many ) fetches the values once from the db. But due to the outer join it returns the same instance of the object more than once. It is not that it queries the db more than one time or returns a cartesian result. Actually a Hashset is a very logical class type to use since it will only have unique references to the objects.
The article offers many solutions i.e. use "select distinct e from Employee ..." and then use a List with no problem ...
I am not sure whether someone from the development team can confirm the above, but it should be correct...
Thanks for your replies.
Regards,