Hibernate: how to make EXISTS query? (not subquery)

Also, if you use JpaRepository, you can easily check entity existence via ORM. Here is a Kotlin example:

interface UserRepository : JpaRepository<User, Long> {
    fun existsByUsername(username: String): Boolean
}

If your goal is inspect some set on emptiness, you may use simple HQL query:

boolean exists = (Long) session.createQuery("select count(*) from PersistentEntity where ...").uniqueResult() > 0

If we are using WHERE clause, the database may have to scan the whole table to count records that matches our criteria, but we can limit to search only for one record, it is enough to say about emptiness.

If there wasn't any search filters the previous query would be admissible as the database would do some optimisation with the use of an index.

so I suppose following query will increase some perfomance comparing to previous one:

boolean exists = session.createQuery("from PersistentEntity where ...").setMaxResults(1).uniqueResult() != null;

HQL doesn't allow to use exists statement. UPD Starting from Hibernate 5 it supports it as a predicate in WHERE

You can use several approaches:

1. For Hibrnate 5: you can use subquery with the same table boolean exists = session.createQuery("select 1 from PersistentEntity where exists (select 1 from PersistentEntity p where ...)").uniqueResult() != null;. Thank to author bellow.
2. count(*) > 0 but this is bad for performance Avoid Using COUNT() in SQL When You Could Use EXISTS()
3. Use boolean exists = session.createQuery("from PersistentEntity where ...").setMaxResults(1).uniqueResult() != null; but this will force Hibernate to load all fields and make hydration to object even if you need just to check for a null.
4. Use session.get(PersistentEntity.class, id) != null and this will work faster if you enabled second level cache but it will be a problem if you need more criteries than just id.
5. You can use the following method: getSession().createQuery("select 1 from PersistentEntity where ...").uniqueResult() != null)