Does a query execution always have to return a list ? How do I replace the code below if I am sure it will only return a single object ?
@Override public
You can use Query#uniqueResult() with Hibernate if I am not wrong. I think that is what you are looking for. In this case, you have to handle the NonUniqueResultException in your code if there is more than one row returned from your query.
NonUniqueResultException