Hi Andreas, I think this is a problem with the newer version (3.2.0.GA) of hibernate that ships with 4.0.5GA. I had a query that worked with Hibernate version 3.2.0CR2 but on "upgrading" to the final release the query did not work, because i was also getting a null pointer exception (exactly the same as yours). There is a bug for it in the Hibernate JIRA http://opensource.atlassian.com/projects/hibernate/browse/HHH-2159, it is a really simple fix if you want to do it yourself. Here is the link to the thread on the hibernate forum http://forum.hibernate.org/viewtopic.php?t=966031&highlight=breaks. Also please vote for the bug as well. Cheers, Andy View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4000319#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...