[Hibernate] problem using 'distinct' to query a list

[Jana Nguyen]

Hi,

I'm trying to get a list of universities from my site table.  My current approach is to write a select distinct query in Hibernate, for the siteParentName attribute; then use that list's size() method to get the number of elements. 

I am getting a null pointer exception when instantiating the query:

public int getNumberUniversitites() {
       
         Query query = null;
         List list = null;
        
        try {
            query = session.createQuery("select distinct site.siteParentName from Site");
        } catch (HibernateException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        
        try {
            list = query.list();
        } catch (HibernateException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
         return list.size();
        
     }

thanks,
Jana
.