If I pass an empty list into a JPA query, I get an error. For example:

List<Municipality> municipalities = myDao.findAll();  // returns empty list
em.createQuery("SELECT p FROM Profile p JOIN p.municipality m WHERE m IN (:municipalities)")
    .setParameter("municipalities", municipalities)
    .getResultList();

Because the list is empty, Hibernate generates this in SQL as "IN ()", which gives me error with Hypersonic database.

There is a ticket for this in Hibernate issue tracking but there are not many comments/activity there. I don't know about support in other ORM products or in JPA spec either.

I don't like the idea of having to manually check for null objects and empty lists every time. Is there some commonly known approach/extension to this? How do you handle these situations?