Thanks a lot for your reply. I am trying this both as a NamedQuery or as a direct query and I am getting the following exception: 2007-09-17 17:12:05,036 DEBUG [org.hibernate.SQL] select count(.) as col_0_0_ from Role role0_, User_Role users1_, User user2_ where role0_.pkey=users1_.roles_pkey and users1_.users_pkey=user2_.pkey and role0_.pkey=? | 2007-09-17 17:12:05,038 DEBUG [org.hibernate.jdbc.AbstractBatcher] about to close PreparedStatement (open PreparedStatements: 1, globally: 1) | 2007-09-17 17:12:05,038 DEBUG [org.hibernate.jdbc.ConnectionManager] aggressively releasing JDBC connection | 2007-09-17 17:12:05,038 DEBUG [org.hibernate.jdbc.ConnectionManager] releasing JDBC connection [ (open PreparedStatements: 0, globally: 0) (open ResultSets: 0, globally: 0)] | 2007-09-17 17:12:05,039 DEBUG [org.hibernate.util.JDBCExceptionReporter] could not execute query [select count(.) as col_0_0_ from Role role0_, User_Role users1_, User user2_ where role0_.pkey=users1_.roles_pkey and users1_.users_pkey=user2_.pkey and role0_.pkey=?] | com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.MySQLSyntaxErrorException: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ') as col_0_0_ from Role role0_, User_Role users1_, User user2_ where role0_.pkey' at line 1 | The compiled HQL is the folling (and when using a named query it is compiled without errors): select count(r.users) from com.servengine.user.Role r WHERE r.pkey = :pkey Thanks for any ideas, Ignacio View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4085107#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...