Here is another example of self-relation. Suppose, we want to write a method that would preload an instance, its parent, grand-parent and its grand-grand-parent in one query. To do this, we would used nested left-join declaration.

<query>
    <query-method>
        <method-name>findMeParentGrandParent</method-name>
        <method-params>
            <method-param>java.lang.Long</method-param>
        </method-params>
    </query-method>
    <jboss-ql><![CDATA[SELECT OBJECT(o) FROM A AS o WHERE o.id = ?1]]></jboss-ql>
    <read-ahead>
        <strategy>on-find</strategy>
        <page-size>4</page-size>
        <eager-load-group>*</eager-load-group>
        <left-join cmr-field="parent" eager-load-group="basic">
            <left-join cmr-field="parent" eager-load-group="basic">
                <left-join cmr-field="parent" eager-load-group="basic"/>
            </left-join>
        </left-join>
    </read-ahead>
</query>

The generated SQL would be:

SELECT t0_o.id, t0_o.name, t0_o.secondName, t0_o.B_FK, t0_o.B2_FK, t0_o.PARENT,
       t1_o_parent.id, t1_o_parent.name,
       t2_o_parent_parent.id, t2_o_parent_parent.name,
       t3_o_parent_parent_parent.id, t3_o_parent_parent_parent.name
  FROM A t0_o
       LEFT OUTER JOIN A t1_o_parent ON t0_o.PARENT=t1_o_parent.id
       LEFT OUTER JOIN A t2_o_parent_parent ON t1_o_parent.PARENT=t2_o_parent_parent.id
       LEFT OUTER JOIN A t3_o_parent_parent_parent 
            ON t2_o_parent_parent.PARENT=t3_o_parent_parent_parent.id
 WHERE (t0_o.id = ?) FOR UPDATE

Note, if we remove left-join metadata we will have only

SELECT t0_o.id, t0_o.name, t0_o.secondName, t0_o.B2_FK, t0_o.PARENT FOR UPDATE