I've had to execute a query using SQL rather than HQL or Criterions.

The query will typically return in excess of 3000 rows. Typically I'll only been interested in the first X number of rows (X is unknown and is determined when processing the results returned). The problem I have is that when I execute the query ...



... Hibernate seems to try and retrieve (and populate into objects) all the rows returned by the query even though I'll only be interested in the first X rows. Is there a way you can configure the number of rows populated and retrieved at a time so that the results are retrieved in batches? i.e. retrieve me 50 rows at a time.

Have you tried
public Query setMaxResult(int maxResult) method of Query interface.
By default there is no limit to number of rows retrieved.
It would limit the number of rows.

Also you can try scroll() method of query interface which will give you scrollable result .
Then you can use method provided by ScrollableResults intrface to manipulate the result.