Hibernate Alias Names

Table of Contents

As shown in some of the previous Hibernate examples, the query generated by Hibernate is:

  Select
    employee0_.id as id1_3_0_,
    employee0_.name as name2_3_0_,

    companymap1_.EMPLOYEE_ID as EMPLOYEE_ID3_3_1_,
    companymap1_.id as id1_1_1_,
    companymap1_.id as formula0_1_,
    companymap1_.id as id1_1_2_,
    companymap1_.EMPLOYEE_ID as EMPLOYEE_ID3_1_2_,
    companymap1_.MANAGER_ID as MANAGER_ID4_1_2_,
    companymap1_.name as name2_1_2_,

    manager2_.id as id1_5_3_,
    manager2_.name as name2_5_3_,

    jobs3_.EMPLOYEE_ID as EMPLOYEE_ID3_3_4_,
    jobs3_.id as id1_4_4_,
    jobs3_.id as formula1_4_,
    jobs3_.id as id1_4_5_,
    jobs3_.designation as designation2_4_5_,
    jobs3_.EMPLOYEE_ID as EMPLOYEE_ID3_4_5_ 

  from
    EMPLOYEE employee0_ 
  left outer join
    COMPANY companymap1_ 
      on employee0_.id=companymap1_.EMPLOYEE_ID 
  left outer join
    MANAGER manager2_ 
      on companymap1_.MANAGER_ID=manager2_.id 
  left outer join
    JOB jobs3_ 
      on employee0_.id=jobs3_.EMPLOYEE_ID 
  where
    employee0_.id=?

Note that every column alias has some particular naming style like:

EMPLOYEE_ID3_3_1_
EMPLOYEE_ID3_1_2_
designation2_4_5_

Hibernate naming strategy for these aliases is:

alias(columnName) + "_" +
Column.uniqueInteger + "_" + 
Table.uniqueInteger "_" +
joinSuffix

where alias(columnName) returns columnName upto the first non-character (underscore in most cases).

The Column.uniqueInteger is set inside Table.addColumn()
And Table.uniqueInteger is set inside Configuration.originalSecondPassCompile()

Functions used to generate these aliases are:

StringHelper.generateAlias() for table-alias
Column.getAlias() for column alias and
BasicLoader.generateSuffixes() for joinSuffix

What's the point?

The reason for providing all the above information is to show that aliases generated by Hibernate are not random.
Each table gets a unique ID and every column gets a unique ID.
Due to this, Hibernate is able to join tables having similarly named columns (like Employee.name and Company.name).

The joinSuffix comes in handy when doing a self-join.
In a self-join, Table.uniqueInteger and Column.uniqueInteger would be same for both the tables.
So this extra suffix resolves that tie as well.

Final place where all this is mashed up is the following line in AbstractEntityJoinWalker.initStatementString()

  persister.selectFragment( alias, suffixes[joins] ) + selectString( associations )

Times when aliases differ

Note that Table.uniqueInteger does depend on the order of POJO classes parsed by Hibernate.
So, in different JVMs, if this order is different, this field will be different in those tables and hence the aliases will also be different.

Also, the joinSuffix depends on the number of joins in a query.
So it varies from query to query and so do the aliases.

On a concluding note, the aliases generated in one JVM are same if the query remains the same. If you ever see yourself concerning about databases not performing optimally because you suspect lot of alias generation for the same query, take a dump of the queries and run sort -u on them.
The truth will be out and if aliases are indeed misbehaving, above code gives you the pointers to look into the code!

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