using a greater than or less than sign in ejb-ql where claus

[ddgsilcox]

I have an ejb-jar file with a cmp entity bean that contains a findBy type query. Inside the ejb-ql tag I can successfully create an equals clause but am unable to deploy the same bean if the where clause uses a greater than or less than sign. I have tried wrapping the symbol in quotes, wrapping the query in a cdata tag, all to no avail.

The error message returned is Error compiling ejbql; - nested throwable: (org.jboss.ejb.plugins.cmp.ejbql.ParseException: encountered ">" expecing "=", "<>"

Is is supported?

[dsundstrom]

EJB-QL does not allow the use of >, <, >= and <= for all field types. What is the type of the field?

[jlisle]

since ejb-jar is an xml file, certain characters need to be escaped. otherwise, there will be parsing errors. the ones i know about are <, >, &, ' and ".

for large sections of xml that need to be escaped, there is a tag called "CDATA"

here is an example from dain sundstrom's JBossCMP document on cmp:


<query-method>
<method-name>findBadDudes_ejbql</method-name>
<method-params>
<method-param>int</method-param>
<method-params>
</query-method>
<ejb-ql><![CDATA[
SELECT OBJECT(g)
FROM gangster g
WHERE g.badness > ?1
]]></ejb-ql>


so, surround your query with <![CDATA[ ....... ]]>

i haven't used this yet, so good luck.

[ddgsilcox]

Ahhh...perhaps that is the problem. This is a java.lang.String java type. I will try it out and post back the results.

FYI: the CDATA tag works just fine, but does not solve the problem.

[ddgsilcox]

Looks like changing the field over to a int allowed the query to parse.

If any developers are watching I suggest a modification to not restrict this for String types. There are valid scenarios for greater than and less than String queries such as name comparison.

[dsundstrom]

What valid scenarios? This seems like a very database specific feature (i.e., it will have different results on different databases).