NOTE: This question was originally asked on StackOverflow, but has not got any attention, so I'm trying my luck here. Feel free to answer it on SO.

I have a JCR content repository implemented in ModeShape (4.0.0.Final, later upgraded to 4.1.0.Final with same result). The structure of the repository is quite simple and looks like this:

    / (root)

        Content/

            Item 1

            Item 2

            Item 3

            ...

 

        Tags/

            Foo/

            Bar/

            .../

The content is initially created and stored under /Content as [nt:unstructured] nodes with [mix:shareable] mixin. When a content item is tagged, the tag node is first created under /Tags if it's not already there, and the content node is shared/cloned to the tag node using Workspace.clone(...) as described in the JCR 2.0 spec, section 14.1, Creation of Shared Nodes.

(I don't find this particularly elegant and I did just read this answer, about creating a tag based search system in JCR, so I realize this might not be the best/fastest/most scaleable solution. But I "inherited" this solution from developers before me, so I hope I don't have to rewrite it all...)

Anyway, the sharing itself seems to work (I can verify that the nodes are there using the ModeShape Content Explorer web app or programatically by session.getRootNode().getNode("Tags/Foo").getNodes()). But I am not able to find any shared nodes using a query!

My initial try (using JCR_SQL2 syntax) was:

    SELECT * FROM [nt:unstructured] AS content
        WHERE PATH(content) LIKE '/Tags/Foo/%' // ISDECENDANTNODE(content, '/Tags/Foo') gives same result
        ORDER BY NAME(content)

The result set was to my surprise empty.

I also tried searching in [mix:shareable] like this:

    SELECT * FROM [mix:shareable] AS content
        WHERE PATH(content) LIKE '/Tags/Foo/%' // ISDECENDANTNODE(content, '/Tags/Foo') gives same result
        ORDER BY NAME(content)

This also returned an empty result set.

I can see from the query:

    SELECT * FROM [nt:unstructured] AS content
        WHERE PATH(content) LIKE '/Content/%' // ISDECENDANTNODE(content, '/Content') works just as well
        ORDER BY NAME(content)

...that the query otherwise works, and returns the expected result (all content). It just doesn't work when searching for the shared nodes.

How do I correctly search for shared nodes in JCR using ModeShape?