Goal: ability to retrieve the foreign key without loading the related object/table row. Scenario: Entity bean contains a related entity bean. @Entity class Unit{ // Unit table // what kind of unit Model model; // related object in Model table, related column is modelId In the Unit table there is a column called modelId to point to the row in the Model table. If I want this key value I can use Unit u = .... somehow get it with EntityManager or whatever; int modelId = u.getModel().getId(); // causes read of Model table! Issue - this will cause a read of the model row from the DB (won't it, as in lazy loading will perform a JIT read) I only need the modelId which is in the Unit table. It seems there should be a way to do this and not load the related object. One can do this with EJBQL by using the reserved Class.id syntax. How can I take advantage of that in the ORM classes? I used a simple example. In my app if I can accomplish this I can easily avoid a lot of unwanted DB fetches. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4110371#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...