Ahead of my claim is that an empty Junction in Criteria API is really a programming concern (possibly a programming/usage error).
I understand your point of view of the way you might expect it to work if you were creating an SQL query builder and wanted to deal with the empty junction situation gracefully.
My view point comes from an empty Junction is a programming error, therefore how do we detect this error soonest during development, we do that by causing the most havoc by working the opposite way, therefore the application should never get through testing. Now if an empty junction is not an error then I'd agree with your logic when using Critera API as an SQL query builder since that is the natural way.
I know of situations where the Criteria API application code would look elegant and cleaner if there was such an AnnulMode setting to Junctions to deal with empty junctions.
Maybe an annul mode of AnnulMode.NATURAL_IF_EMPTY would work the way you describe that would make sense to me. It stays in the query but flips the way you describe.
We can always argue over what everyone thinks the default should be (I couldn't not care less what the default is, if only I can set AnnulMode) I just want good API design that will cope with common situations I have experienced.
As for the you know of a real app that crashed etc... thats your testing departments and QAs problem.
As for you not wishing to use such and such software, well for a start I am in no way a HIB committer, I have experience with just this problem with Junctions and Criteria API myself.
Line 76 I guess: http://fisheye.jboss.com/browse/~br=root%3A/Hibernate/core/trunk/core/src/main/java/org/hibernate/criterion/Junction.java?r=14993#l76 Darryl _______________________________________________ hibernate-dev mailing list hibernate-dev@lists.jboss.org https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/hibernate-dev
