Query.uniqueResult() method defined as:
Convenience method to return a single instance that matches the query, or null if the query returns no results.
But if I execute and don't get a result, hibernate throws a "Caused by: org.hibernate.ObjectNotFoundException: No row with the given identifier exists" instead of returning null as it is documented
Please ignore this post. Ended up being a not so descriptive error message. The problem was with an Annotation mapping that had changed that has a not null specification, but was supposed to be nullable. Sorry for the confusion