16.4. Custom SQL for loading

You can also declare your own SQL (or HQL) queries for entity loading:
<sql-query name="person">
    <return alias="pers" class="Person" lock-mode="upgrade"/>
    SELECT NAME AS {pers.name}, ID AS {pers.id}
    FROM PERSON
    WHERE ID=?
    FOR UPDATE
</sql-query>
This is just a named query declaration, as discussed earlier. You can reference this named query in a class mapping:
<class name="Person">
    <id name="id">
        <generator class="increment"/>
    </id>
    <property name="name" not-null="true"/>
    <loader query-ref="person"/>
</class>
This even works with stored procedures.
You can even define a query for collection loading:
<set name="employments" inverse="true">
    <key/>
    <one-to-many class="Employment"/>
    <loader query-ref="employments"/>
</set>
<sql-query name="employments">
    <load-collection alias="emp" role="Person.employments"/>
    SELECT {emp.*}
    FROM EMPLOYMENT emp
    WHERE EMPLOYER = :id
    ORDER BY STARTDATE ASC, EMPLOYEE ASC
</sql-query>
You can also define an entity loader that loads a collection by join fetching:
<sql-query name="person">
    <return alias="pers" class="Person"/>
    <return-join alias="emp" property="pers.employments"/>
    SELECT NAME AS {pers.*}, {emp.*}
    FROM PERSON pers
    LEFT OUTER JOIN EMPLOYMENT emp
        ON pers.ID = emp.PERSON_ID
    WHERE ID=?
</sql-query>