Setting fetch mode for arbitrary HQL

Bugmaster · **Joined:** Fri Jun 02, 2006 1:14 am **Posts:** 30

Hi all,

Let's say that I have three Hibernate-mapped classes in my project: Cat, Dog, and Squirrel. Here are their relevant properties:

Code:

public class Squirrel {
    private Long squirrelId;
    ...
}

public class Cat {
    private Long catId;
    private String slaveName;
    private Set<Squirrel> enemies;
    ...
}

public class Dog {
    private Long dogId;
    private String ownerName;
    ....
}

The Cat.enemies association is mapped as non-lazy in my cat.hbm.xml file. This works very well, because usually, whenever I load a specific Cat, I also want to load all of its enemies... except in this one case, when I want to execute the following HQL:

Code:

select cat, dog from Cat cat, Dog dog where cat.slaveName = dog.ownerName

I expect this query to return tens of thousands of rows, and I do NOT want to load the cat.enemies associations in this case, since a). I'd be doing tens of thousands of extra selects, and b). I don't care about the enemies, and they take up a lot of memory, so I'd rather not load them at all.

What can I do ? The obvious answer is, "change the cat.enemies association to be lazy-loaded, duh", but I can't do that; the Cat class comes from a library that's used by lots of other projects in our codebase, and I don't have the right to modify it (and besides, most of the time I actually do want to load cat.enemies, anyway). Another answer might be, "use a Criteria query instead of HQL, and override the fetch mode by calling setFetchMode(...)". Unfortunately, there's no mapped relationship between Cat and Dog, so I don't know how to express the join above in terms of Criteria.

I appreciate your help...

mjablonski · **Posted:** Thu Nov 18, 2010 5:04 am

Maybe you can use different FetchProfiles:

http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/core/3.6/reference/en-US/html/performance.html#performance-fetching-profiles

HTH, Maik

Bugmaster · **Joined:** Fri Jun 02, 2006 1:14 am **Posts:** 30

Thanks, Maik, that sounds like almost exactly what I need. However, I've discovered that I'm somewhat confused about fetch modes. Here's the relevant snippet from my (admittedly, obsolete) FetchMode.java:

Code:

   /**
    * Fetch using an outer join. Equivalent to <tt>fetch="join"</tt>.
    */
   public static final FetchMode JOIN = new FetchMode("JOIN");
   /**
    * Fetch eagerly, using a separate select. Equivalent to
    * <tt>fetch="select"</tt>.
    */
   public static final FetchMode SELECT = new FetchMode("SELECT");

   /**
    * Fetch lazily. Equivalent to <tt>outer-join="false"</tt>.
    * @deprecated use <tt>FetchMode.SELECT</tt>
    */
   public static final FetchMode LAZY = SELECT;

So... "LAZY" isn't really lazy, it just does a separate select, which is exactly what I want to avoid :-( Am I missing something ?

Bugmaster · **Joined:** Fri Jun 02, 2006 1:14 am **Posts:** 30

Just pinging this post to see if anyone can help me out with fetch modes: which fetch mode would PREVENT collections from being loaded at all ? But perhaps I should open up a separate thread ?