IN-clause in HQL or Java Persistence Query Language

Leaving out the parenthesis and simply calling 'setParameter' now works with at least Hibernate.

String jpql = "from A where name in :names";
Query q = em.createQuery(jpql);
q.setParameter("names", l);

in HQL you can use query parameter and set Collection with setParameterList method.

    Query q = session.createQuery("SELECT entity FROM Entity entity WHERE name IN (:names)");
    q.setParameterList("names", names);

Are you using Hibernate's Query object, or JPA? For JPA, it should work fine:

String jpql = "from A where name in (:names)";
Query q = em.createQuery(jpql);
q.setParameter("names", l);

For Hibernate's, you'll need to use the setParameterList:

String hql = "from A where name in (:names)";
Query q = s.createQuery(hql);
q.setParameterList("names", l);