If you can even figure out how this works, Kudos. I'm pretty proud I figured out how to make this. There might be better ways, but this way works, and gets me what I need:

select * from task x, (select p.project_id, u.workflow_id, (select min(due_date) as min_due_date from task t where t.workflow_id=u.workflow_id) as min_due_date from task u, workflow p where u.workflow_id=p.workflow_id group by u.workflow_id, p.project_id) y where x.due_date=y.min_due_date and x.workflow_id=y.workflow_id;

Muhahahaha.

I am struggling through Hibernate funness. I bought the O'Reilly book, but it's a bit thin, and after reading a few peoples' reviews, I also got the Persistence with Hibernate book from Manning which is AWESOME.

the merge method is evil. It looks like a good replacement for persist() but it isn't. merge() doesn't actually tie the object to the database state, so if you call merge() repeatedly on an object with no Id, it will save it repeatedly. persist() however does the right thing. The only thing merge gives you is the ability to save an object across sessions, but it would probably be better to attempt to re-attach the object instead of merging it.