org.hibernate.loader.MultipleBagFetchException: cannot simultaneously fetch multiple bags

Hibernate doesn't allow fetching more than one bag because that would generate a Cartesian product.

Now, you will find lots of answers, blog posts, videos, or other resources telling you to use a Set instead of a List for your collections.

That's terrible advice!

Using Sets instead of Lists will make the MultipleBagFetchException go away, but the Cartesian Product will still be there.

The right fix

Instead of using multiple JOIN FETCH in a single JPQL or Criteria API query:

List<Post> posts = entityManager.createQuery("""
    select p
    from Post p
    left join fetch p.comments
    left join fetch p.tags
    where p.id between :minId and :maxId
    """, Post.class)
.setParameter("minId", 1L)
.setParameter("maxId", 50L)
.getResultList();

You can do the following trick:

List<Post> posts = entityManager.createQuery("""
    select distinct p
    from Post p
    left join fetch p.comments
    where p.id between :minId and :maxId
    """, Post.class)
.setParameter("minId", 1L)
.setParameter("maxId", 50L)
.setHint(QueryHints.PASS_DISTINCT_THROUGH, false)
.getResultList();

posts = entityManager.createQuery("""
    select distinct p
    from Post p
    left join fetch p.tags t
    where p in :posts
    """, Post.class)
.setParameter("posts", posts)
.setHint(QueryHints.PASS_DISTINCT_THROUGH, false)
.getResultList();

As long as you fetch at most one collection using JOIN FETCH, you will be fine. By using multiple queries, you will avoid the Cartesian Product since any other collection but the first one is fetched using a secondary query.


For me I had the same error and I solved by adding the annotation of hibernate @Fetch

@OneToMany(mappedBy="parent", fetch=FetchType.EAGER)
@Fetch(value = FetchMode.SUBSELECT)
private List<Child> childs;

You can only join-fetch following one relation for an entity (either billPaidDetailses or billProductList).

Consider using lazy associations and loading collections when they are needed, OR using lazy associations and loading collections manually with Hibernate.initialize(..). At least that was the conclusion I came to when I had a similar issue.

Either way it will take more than one query to the database.