A select statement is a string which consists of the following clauses:

In BNF syntax, a select statement is defined as:

A select statement must always have a SELECT and a FROM clause. The square brackets [] indicate that the other clauses are optional.

Update and delete statements provide bulk operations over sets of entities. In BNF syntax, these operations are defined as:

The update and delete clauses determine the type of the entities to be updated or deleted. The WHERE clause may be used to restrict the scope of the update or delete operation. Update and delete statements are described further in Section 2.9, “ JPQL Bulk Update and Delete ”.

Entities are designated in query strings by their entity names. The entity name is defined by the name element of the Entity annotation (or the entity-name XML descriptor element), and defaults to the unqualified name of the entity class. Entity names are scoped within the persistence unit and must be unique within the persistence unit.

This example assumes that the application developer provides several entity classes, representing magazines, publishers, authors, and articles. The abstract schema types for these entities are Magazine, Publisher, Author, and Article.

Several Entities with Abstract Persistence Schemas Defined in the Same Persistence Unit. The entity Publisher has a one-to-many relationships with Magazine. There is also a one-to-many relationship between Magazine and Article . The entity Article is related to Author in a one-to-one relationship.

Queries to select magazines can be defined by navigating over the association-fields and state-fields defined by Magazine and Author. A query to find all magazines that have unpublished articles is as follows:

SELECT DISTINCT mag FROM Magazine AS mag JOIN mag.articles AS art WHERE art.published = FALSE

This query navigates over the association-field authors of the abstract schema type Magazine to find articles, and uses the state-field published of Article to select those magazines that have at least one article that is published. Although predefined reserved identifiers, such as DISTINCT, FROM, AS, JOIN, WHERE, and FALSE appear in upper case in this example, predefined reserved identifiers are case insensitive. The SELECT clause of this example designates the return type of this query to be of type Magazine. Because the same persistence unit defines the abstract persistence schemas of the related entities, the developer can also specify a query over articles that utilizes the abstract schema type for products, and hence the state-fields and association-fields of both the abstract schema types Magazine and Author. For example, if the abstract schema type Author has a state-field named firstName, a query over articles can be specified using this state-field. Such a query might be to find all magazines that have articles authored by someone with the first name "John".

SELECT DISTINCT mag FROM Magazine mag JOIN mag.articles art JOIN art.author auth WHERE auth.firstName = 'John'

Because Magazine is related to Author by means of the relationships between Magazine and Article and between Article and Author, navigation using the association-fields authors and product is used to express the query. This query is specified by using the abstract schema name Magazine, which designates the abstract schema type over which the query ranges. The basis for the navigation is provided by the association-fields authors and product of the abstract schema types Magazine and Article respectively.

An identifier is a character sequence of unlimited length. The character sequence must begin with a Java identifier start character, and all other characters must be Java identifier part characters. An identifier start character is any character for which the method Character.isJavaIdentifierStart returns true. This includes the underscore (_) character and the dollar sign ($) character. An identifier part character is any character for which the method Character.isJavaIdentifierPart returns true. The question mark (?) character is reserved for use by the Java Persistence query language. The following are reserved identifiers:

Reserved identifiers are case insensitive. Reserved identifiers must not be used as identification variables. It is recommended that other SQL reserved words also not be as identification variables in queries because they may be used as reserved identifiers in future releases of the specification.

An identification variable is a valid identifier declared in the FROM clause of a query. All identification variables must be declared in the FROM clause. Identification variables cannot be declared in other clauses. An identification variable must not be a reserved identifier or have the same name as any entity in the same persistence unit. Identification variables are case insensitive. An identification variable evaluates to a value of the type of the expression used in declaring the variable. For example, consider the previous query:

SELECT DISTINCT mag FROM Magazine mag JOIN mag.articles art JOIN art.author auth WHERE auth.firstName = 'John'

In the FROM clause declaration mag.articlesart, the identification variable art evaluates to any Article value directly reachable from Magazine. The association-field articles is a collection of instances of the abstract schema type Article and the identification variable art refers to an element of this collection. The type of auth is the abstract schema type of Author. An identification variable ranges over the abstract schema type of an entity. An identification variable designates an instance of an entity abstract schema type or an element of a collection of entity abstract schema type instances. Identification variables are existentially quantified in a query. An identification variable always designates a reference to a single value. It is declared in one of three ways: in a range variable declaration, in a join clause, or in a collection member declaration. The identification variable declarations are evaluated from left to right in the FROM clause, and an identification variable declaration can use the result of a preceding identification variable declaration of the query string.

The syntax for declaring an identification variable as a range variable is similar to that of SQL; optionally, it uses the AS keyword.

Range variable declarations allow the developer to designate a "root" for objects which may not be reachable by navigation. In order to select values by comparing more than one instance of an entity abstract schema type, more than one identification variable ranging over the abstract schema type is needed in the FROM clause.

The following query returns magazines whose price is greater than the price of magazines published by "Adventure" publishers. This example illustrates the use of two different identification variables in the FROM clause, both of the abstract schema type Magazine. The SELECT clause of this query determines that it is the magazines with prices greater than those of "Adventure" publisher's that are returned.

SELECT DISTINCT mag1 FROM Magazine mag1, Magazine mag2
WHERE mag1.price > mag2.price AND mag2.publisher.name = 'Adventure'

An identification variable followed by the navigation operator (.) and a state-field or association-field is a path expression. The type of the path expression is the type computed as the result of navigation; that is, the type of the state-field or association-field to which the expression navigates. Depending on navigability, a path expression that leads to a association-field may be further composed. Path expressions can be composed from other path expressions if the original path expression evaluates to a single-valued type (not a collection) corresponding to a association-field. Path expression navigability is composed using "inner join" semantics. That is, if the value of a non-terminal association-field in the path expression is null, the path is considered to have no value, and does not participate in the determination of the result. The syntax for single-valued path expressions and collection valued path expressions is as follows:

A single_valued_association_field is designated by the name of an association-field in a one-to-one or many-to-one relationship. The type of a single_valued_association_field and thus a single_valued_association_path_expression is the abstract schema type of the related entity. A collection_valued_association_field is designated by the name of an association-field in a one-to-many or a many-to-many relationship. The type of a collection_valued_association_field is a collection of values of the abstract schema type of the related entity. An embedded_class_state _field is designated by the name of an entity state field that corresponds to an embedded class. Navigation to a related entity results in a value of the related entity's abstract schema type.

The evaluation of a path expression terminating in a state-field results in the abstract schema type corresponding to the Java type designated by the state-field. It is syntactically illegal to compose a path expression from a path expression that evaluates to a collection. For example, if mag designates Magazine, the path expression mag.articles.author is illegal since navigation to authors results in a collection. This case should produce an error when the query string is verified. To handle such a navigation, an identification variable must be declared in the FROM clause to range over the elements of the articles collection. Another path expression must be used to navigate over each such element in the WHERE clause of the query, as in the following query which returns all authors that have any articles in any magazines:

SELECT DISTINCT art.author FROM Magazine AS mag, IN(mag.articles) art

An inner join may be implicitly specified by the use of a cartesian product in the FROM clause and a join condition in the WHERE clause.

The syntax for explicit join operations is as follows:

The following inner and outer join operation types are supported.

[ INNER ] JOIN join_association_path_expression [AS] identification_variable

SELECT pub FROM Publisher pub JOIN pub.magazines mag WHERE pub.revenue > 1000000

SELECT pub FROM Publisher pub INNER JOIN pub.magazines mag WHERE pub.revenue > 1000000

SELECT OBJECT(pub) FROM Publisher pub, IN(pub.magazines) mag WHERE pub.revenue > 1000000

LEFT [OUTER] JOIN join_association_path_expression [AS] identification_variable

SELECT pub FROM Publisher pub LEFT JOIN pub.magazines mag WHERE pub.revenue > 1000000

SELECT pub FROM Publisher pub LEFT OUTER JOIN pub.magazines mags WHERE pub.revenue > 1000000

SELECT mag FROM Magazine mag LEFT JOIN FETCH mag.articles WHERE mag.id = 1

An identification variable declared by a collection_member_declaration ranges over values of a collection obtained by navigation using a path expression. Such a path expression represents a navigation involving the association-fields of an entity abstract schema type. Because a path expression can be based on another path expression, the navigation can use the association-fields of related entities. An identification variable of a collection member declaration is declared using a special operator, the reserved identifier IN . The argument to the IN operator is a collection-valued path expression. The path expression evaluates to a collection type specified as a result of navigation to a collection-valued association-field of an entity abstract schema type. The syntax for declaring a collection member identification variable is as follows:

For example, the query

SELECT DISTINCT mag FROM Magazine mag
    JOIN mag.articles art
    JOIN art.author auth
    WHERE auth.lastName = 'Grisham'

may equivalently be expressed as follows, using the IN operator:

SELECT DISTINCT mag FROM Magazine mag,
    IN(mag.articles) art
    WHERE art.author.lastName = 'Grisham'

In this example, articles is the name of an association-field whose value is a collection of instances of the abstract schema type Article. The identification variable art designates a member of this collection, a single Article abstract schema type instance. In this example, mag is an identification variable of the abstract schema type Magazine.

Java Persistence queries are automatically polymorphic. The FROM clause of a query designates not only instances of the specific entity classes to which explicitly refers but of subclasses as well. The instances returned by a query include instances of the subclasses that satisfy the query criteria.

A string literal is enclosed in single quotes--for example: 'literal'. A string literal that includes a single quote is represented by two single quotes--for example: 'literal''s'. String literals in queries, like Java String literals, use unicode character encoding. The use of Java escape notation is not supported in query string literals. Exact numeric literals support the use of Java integer literal syntax as well as SQL exact numeric literal syntax. Approximate literals support the use of Java floating point literal syntax as well as SQL approximate numeric literal syntax. Enum literals support the use of Java enum literal syntax. The enum class name must be specified. Appropriate suffixes may be used to indicate the specific type of a numeric literal in accordance with the Java Language Specification. The boolean literals are TRUE and FALSE. Although predefined reserved literals appear in upper case, they are case insensitive.

All identification variables used in the WHERE or HAVING clause of a SELECT or DELETE statement must be declared in the FROM clause, as described in Section 2.3.2, “ JPQL Identification Variables ”. The identification variables used in the WHERE clause of an UPDATE statement must be declared in the UPDATE clause. Identification variables are existentially quantified in the WHERE and HAVING clause. This means that an identification variable represents a member of a collection or an instance of an entity's abstract schema type. An identification variable never designates a collection in its entirety.

It is illegal to use a collection_valued_path_expression within a WHERE or HAVING clause as part of a conditional expression except in an empty_collection_comparison_expression, in a collection_member_expression, or as an argument to the SIZE operator.

Either positional or named parameters may be used. Positional and named parameters may not be mixed in a single query. Input parameters can only be used in the WHERE clause or HAVING clause of a query.

Note that if an input parameter value is null, comparison operations or arithmetic operations involving the input parameter will return an unknown value. See Section 2.10, “ JPQL Null Values ”.

SELECT pub FROM Publisher pub WHERE pub.revenue > :rev

Conditional expressions are composed of other conditional expressions, comparison operations, logical operations, path expressions that evaluate to boolean values, boolean literals, and boolean input parameters. Arithmetic expressions can be used in comparison expressions. Arithmetic expressions are composed of other arithmetic expressions, arithmetic operations, path expressions that evaluate to numeric values, numeric literals, and numeric input parameters. Arithmetic operations use numeric promotion. Standard bracketing () for ordering expression evaluation is supported. Conditional expressions are defined as follows:

Aggregate functions can only be used in conditional expressions in a HAVING clause. See Section 2.6, “ JPQL GROUP BY, HAVING ”.

The operators are listed below in order of decreasing precedence.

The following sections describe other operators used in specific expressions.

The syntax for the use of the comparison operator [ NOT ] BETWEEN in a conditional expression is as follows:

arithmetic_expression [NOT] BETWEEN arithmetic_expression AND arithmetic_expression | string_expression [NOT] BETWEEN string_expression AND string_expression | datetime_expression [NOT] BETWEEN datetime_expression AND datetime_expression

The BETWEEN expression

x BETWEEN y AND z

is semantically equivalent to:

y <= x AND x <= z

The rules for unknown and NULL values in comparison operations apply. See Section 2.10, “ JPQL Null Values ” . Examples are:

p.age BETWEEN 15 and 19

is equivalent to

p.age >= 15 AND p.age <= 19

p.age NOT BETWEEN 15 and 19

is equivalent to

p.age < 15 OR p.age > 19

The syntax for the use of the comparison operator [ NOT ] IN in a conditional expression is as follows:

The state_field_path_expression must have a string, numeric, or enum value. The literal and/or input_parameter values must be like the same abstract schema type of the state_field_path_expression in type. (See Section 2.11, “ JPQL Equality and Comparison Semantics ” ).

The results of the subquery must be like the same abstract schema type of the state_field_path_expression in type. Subqueries are discussed in Section 2.5.15, “ JPQL Subqueries ”. Examples are:

o.country IN ('UK', 'US', 'France')

is true for UK and false for Peru, and is equivalent to the expression:

(o.country = 'UK') OR (o.country = 'US') OR (o.country = ' France')

In the following expression:

o.country NOT IN ('UK', 'US', 'France')

is false for UK and true for Peru, and is equivalent to the expression:

NOT ((o.country = 'UK') OR (o.country = 'US') OR (o.country = 'France'))

There must be at least one element in the comma separated list that defines the set of values for the IN expression. If the value of a state_field_path_expression in an IN or NOT IN expression is NULL or unknown, the value of the expression is unknown.

The syntax for the use of the comparison operator [ NOT ] LIKE in a conditional expression is as follows:

string_expression [NOT] LIKE pattern_value [ESCAPE escape_character]

The string_expression must have a string value. The pattern_value is a string literal or a string-valued input parameter in which an underscore (_) stands for any single character, a percent (%) character stands for any sequence of characters (including the empty sequence), and all other characters stand for themselves. The optional escape_character is a single-character string literal or a character-valued input parameter (i.e., char or Character) and is used to escape the special meaning of the underscore and percent characters in pattern_value. Examples are:

The syntax for the use of the comparison operator IS NULL in a conditional expression is as follows:

{single_valued_path_expression | input_parameter } IS [NOT] NULL

A null comparison expression tests whether or not the single-valued path expression or input parameter is a NULL value.

The syntax for the use of the comparison operator IS EMPTY in an empty_collection_comparison_expression is as follows:

collection_valued_path_expression IS [NOT] EMPTY

This expression tests whether or not the collection designated by the collection-valued path expression is empty (i.e, has no elements).

For example, the following query will return all magazines that don't have any articles at all:

SELECT mag FROM Magazine mag WHERE mag.articles IS EMPTY

If the value of the collection-valued path expression in an empty collection comparison expression is unknown, the value of the empty comparison expression is unknown.

The use of the comparison collection_member_expression is as follows: syntax for the operator MEMBER OF in an

This expression tests whether the designated value is a member of the collection specified by the collection-valued path expression. If the collection valued path expression designates an empty collection, the value of the MEMBER OF expression is FALSE and the value of the NOT MEMBER OF expression is TRUE. Otherwise, if the value of the collection-valued path expression or single-valued association-field path expression in the collection member expression is NULL or unknown, the value of the collection member expression is unknown.

An EXISTS expression is a predicate that is true only if the result of the subquery consists of one or more values and that is false otherwise. The syntax of an exists expression is

The use of the reserved word OF is optional in this expression.

Example:

SELECT DISTINCT auth FROM Author auth
    WHERE EXISTS
        (SELECT spouseAuthor FROM Author spouseAuthor WHERE spouseAuthor = auth.spouse)

The result of this query consists of all authors whose spouse is also an author.

An ALL conditional expression is a predicate that is true if the comparison operation is true for all values in the result of the subquery or the result of the subquery is empty. An ALL conditional expression is false if the result of the comparison is false for at least one row, and is unknown if neither true nor false. An ANY conditional expression is a predicate that is true if the comparison operation is true for some value in the result of the subquery. An ANY conditional expression is false if the result of the subquery is empty or if the comparison operation is false for every value in the result of the subquery, and is unknown if neither true nor false. The keyword SOME is synonymous with ANY. The comparison operators used with ALL or ANY conditional expressions are =, <, <=, >, >=, <>. The result of the subquery must be like that of the other argument to the comparison operator in type. See Section 2.11, “ JPQL Equality and Comparison Semantics ”. The syntax of an ALL or ANY expression is specified as follows:

The following example select the authors who make the highest salary for their magazine:

SELECT auth FROM Author auth
    WHERE auth.salary >= ALL(SELECT a.salary FROM Author a WHERE a.magazine = auth.magazine)

Subqueries may be used in the WHERE or HAVING clause. The syntax for subqueries is as follows:

Subqueries are restricted to the WHERE and HAVING clauses in this release. Support for subqueries in the FROM clause will be considered in a later release of the specification.

Examples:

SELECT DISTINCT auth FROM Author auth
    WHERE EXISTS (SELECT spouseAuth FROM Author spouseAuth WHERE spouseAuth = auth.spouse)

SELECT mag FROM Magazine mag
    WHERE (SELECT COUNT(art) FROM mag.articles art) > 10

Note that some contexts in which a subquery can be used require that the subquery be a scalar subquery (i.e., produce a single result). This is illustrated in the following example involving a numeric comparison operation.

SELECT goodPublisher FROM Publisher goodPublisher
    WHERE goodPublisher.revenue < (SELECT AVG(p.revenue) FROM Publisher p)

The JPQL includes the following built-in functions, which may be used in the WHERE or HAVING clause of a query. If the value of any argument to a functional expression is null or unknown, the value of the functional expression is unknown.

The type of the query result specified by the SELECT clause of a query is an entity abstract schema type, a state-field type, the result of an aggregate function, the result of a construction operation, or some sequence of these. The result type of the SELECT clause is defined by the result types of the select_expressions contained in it. When multiple select_expressions are used in the SELECT clause, the result of the query is of type Object[], and the elements in this result correspond in order to the order of their specification in the SELECT clause and in type to the result types of each of the select_expressions. The type of the result of a select_expression is as follows:

A constructor may be used in the SELECT list to return one or more Java instances. The specified class is not required to be an entity or to be mapped to the database. The constructor name must be fully qualified.

If an entity class name is specified in the SELECT NEW clause, the resulting entity instances are in the new state.

SELECT NEW com.company.PublisherInfo(pub.id, pub.revenue, mag.price)
    FROM Publisher pub JOIN pub.magazines mag WHERE mag.price > 5.00

If the result of a query corresponds to a association-field or state-field whose value is null, that null value is returned in the result of the query method. The IS NOT NULL construct can be used to eliminate such null values from the result set of the query. Note, however, that state-field types defined in terms of Java numeric primitive types cannot produce NULL values in the query result. A query that returns such a state-field type as a result type must not return a null value.

The result of a query may be the result of an aggregate function applied to a path expression. The following aggregate functions can be used in the SELECT clause of a query: AVG, COUNT, MAX, MIN, SUM. For all aggregate functions except COUNT, the path expression that is the argument to the aggregate function must terminate in a state-field. The path expression argument to COUNT may terminate in either a state-field or a association-field, or the argument to COUNT may be an identification variable. Arguments to the functions SUM and AVG must be numeric. Arguments to the functions MAX and MIN must correspond to orderable state-field types (i.e., numeric types, string types, character types, or date types). The Java type that is contained in the result of a query using an aggregate function is as follows:

The argument to an aggregate function may be preceded by the keyword DISTINCT to specify that duplicate values are to be eliminated before the aggregate function is applied. Null values are eliminated before the aggregate function is applied, regardless of whether the keyword DISTINCT is specified.

SELECT AVG(mag.price) FROM Magazine mag

SELECT SUM(mag.price) FROM Publisher pub JOIN pub.magazines mag pub.firstName = 'Larry'

SELECT COUNT(mag) FROM Magazine mag