I tried debugging the warning "Function template anticipated 3 arguments, but 2 arguments encountered" in TemplateRenderer. However, I still don't understand what's actually going on... The following uses an HQL query because there seems to be no string-to-int conversion in JPQL (resorting to HQL cast): public Set<Long> findImageVariantIdsWithOutOfBoundsDimension() { final StringBuilder queryBuilder = new StringBuilder(); queryBuilder.append("select id from ImageVariant where "); // imageVariantType is something like R_110X75 with 110 being max x. // cast(substring( extracts 110. queryBuilder.append("dimensionX > cast(substring(imageVariantType, 3, locate('X', imageVariantType) - 3), int) "); queryBuilder.append("or "); // imageVariantType is something like R_110X75 with 75 being max y. // cast(substring( extracts 75. queryBuilder.append("dimensionY > cast(substring(imageVariantType, locate('X', imageVariantType) + 1), int)"); final Query query = getEntityManager().createQuery(queryBuilder.toString()); @SuppressWarnings("unchecked") final Set<Long> result = new HashSet<Long>(query.getResultList()); return result; } I checked TemplateRenderer's internal argument list which contains ['X', imagevaria0_.imagevarianttype]. I'm totally puzzled. Cheers, Marcel -- Marcel Stör, http://www.frightanic.com Couchsurfing: http://www.couchsurfing.com/people/marcelstoer O< ascii ribbon campaign - stop html mail - www.asciiribbon.org