I have a simple native query: select distinct usr.userid from user usr where usr.name like '%jai%' which returns me the expected output when used with setFirstResult and setMaxResult. Not sure whether its a problem with your query or something else. You can try enabling TRACE level logs of Hibernate package by adding the following to your jboss-log4j.xml file under the %JBOSS_HOME%\server\< serverName>\conf folder. Then in your server.log see if you can find something which will help you understand what's going on. For me, i see logs like this: 2008-06-16 20:38:57,932 TRACE [http-0.0.0.0-8080-2] [org.hibernate.jdbc.AbstractBatcher] preparing statement | 2008-06-16 20:38:58,011 DEBUG [http-0.0.0.0-8080-2] [org.hibernate.jdbc.AbstractBatcher] about to open ResultSet (open ResultSets: 0, globally: 0) | 2008-06-16 20:38:58,011 TRACE [http-0.0.0.0-8080-2] [org.hibernate.loader.Loader] processing result set | 2008-06-16 20:38:58,011 DEBUG [http-0.0.0.0-8080-2] [org.hibernate.loader.Loader] result set row: 0 | 2008-06-16 20:38:58,011 DEBUG [http-0.0.0.0-8080-2] [org.hibernate.loader.Loader] result row: | 2008-06-16 20:38:58,011 TRACE [http-0.0.0.0-8080-2] [org.hibernate.type.BigIntegerType] returning '7' as column: ID | 2008-06-16 20:38:58,011 DEBUG [http-0.0.0.0-8080-2] [org.hibernate.loader.Loader] result set row: 1 | 2008-06-16 20:38:58,011 DEBUG [http-0.0.0.0-8080-2] [org.hibernate.loader.Loader] result row: | 2008-06-16 20:38:58,011 TRACE [http-0.0.0.0-8080-2] [org.hibernate.type.BigIntegerType] returning '8' as column: ID | 2008-06-16 20:38:58,011 DEBUG [http-0.0.0.0-8080-2] [org.hibernate.loader.Loader] result set row: 2 | 2008-06-16 20:38:58,011 DEBUG [http-0.0.0.0-8080-2] [org.hibernate.loader.Loader] result row: | 2008-06-16 20:38:58,026 TRACE [http-0.0.0.0-8080-2] [org.hibernate.type.BigIntegerType] returning '9' as column: ID | 2008-06-16 20:38:58,026 TRACE [http-0.0.0.0-8080-2] [org.hibernate.loader.Loader] done processing result set (3 rows) | 2008-06-16 20:38:58,026 DEBUG [http-0.0.0.0-8080-2] [org.hibernate.jdbc.AbstractBatcher] about to close ResultSet (open ResultSets: 1, globally: 1) | 2008-06-16 20:38:58,026 DEBUG [http-0.0.0.0-8080-2] [org.hibernate.jdbc.AbstractBatcher] about to close PreparedStatement (open PreparedStatements: 1, globally: 1) | 2008-06-16 20:38:58,026 TRACE [http-0.0.0.0-8080-2] [org.hibernate.jdbc.AbstractBatcher] closing statement | View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4158385#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...