I'm trying to implement paging using row-based limiting (for example: setFirstResult(5) and setMaxResults(10)) on a Hibernate Criteria query that has joins to other tables.
Understandably, data is getting cut off randomly; and the reason for that is explained here.
As a solution, the page suggests using a "second sql select" instead of a join.
How can I convert my existing criteria query (which has joins using createAlias()) to use a nested select instead?
You can achieve the desired result by requesting a list of distinct ids instead of a list of distinct hydrated objects.
Simply add this to your criteria:
criteria.setProjection(Projections.distinct(Projections.property("id")));
Now you'll get the correct number of results according to your row-based limiting. The reason this works is because the projection will perform the distinctness check as part of the sql query, instead of what a ResultTransformer does which is to filter the results for distinctness after the sql query has been performed.
Worth noting is that instead of getting a list of objects, you will now get a list of ids, which you can use to hydrate objects from hibernate later.