What does the maxElements attribute do on the Finder Annotation

Question

I have a Container Managed Bean that uses the Weblogic 9.1 Annotations, in particular the finder annotation. The following is the query I am running:
@Finder(signature = "Collection findPreviousItemByKey
(Integer itemId)",
ejbQl = "select OBJECT(o) from ItemEJB as o where o.itemFinishDate < " +
"(select r.itemFinishDate from ItemEJB as r where r.key =?
1)ORDER BY o.itemFinishDate desc", maxElements = "1")
This query could potentially return a lot of data we only want the first item (which is the previous item of the key passed in) in the collection.
What is the most efficient way of getting the first item: 1) using the maxElements attribute of the finder
OR
2) getting the entire collection back and using an iterator to take the first one.
Any info would be great.
Thanks,
Ian

Answer 1

see
@ejbgen:entity Annotation
go to
http://edocs.bea.com/workshop/docs81/doc/en/core/index.html
see
max-beans-in-cache
Set it to 1
See also
@ejbgen:finder Annotation
- group-name
- max-elements
set it to 1 or to desired
optional:
Add to a group the desired cmp fields, if u don't want to display all the columns.
After the exec. of the findMethod u should have 1 Object, one EJB inst., in your Collection, and furthermore only the desired DB table columns