[Use Case]: Statically specify First/Limit at dev time so that singular return type can be valid on methods

[njr-11]

As a ...

• Application user/user of the configuration itself
• API user (application developer)
• SPI user (container or runtime developer)
• Specification implementer

I need to be able to ...

statically specify a limit at development time

Which enables me to ...

write a repository method with a singular return type (Optional<MyEntity> or MyEntity).

Additional information

This is currently only possible (and awkwardly so) with Query by Method Name.

To allow it with @Query and parameter based queries (@Find), we can add First (proposed by Gavin in #530 (comment))

@Find @First
@OrderBy(value = _Employee.SALARY, descending = true)
@OrderBy(value = _Employee.ID)
Optional<Employee> highestPaid(String jobTitle);

The value would default to 1.

Reminder to update recommendations in NonUniqueResultException once we have this.

This is being proposed for after Jakarta Data version 1.0.

[gavinking]

@njr-11 @otaviojava do you think we should scope this for 1.1?

I think we should discuss it at least.

[njr-11]

@njr-11 @otaviojava do you think we should scope this for 1.1?

I think we should discuss it at least.

I agree with including it. It would be easy to add and is useful.

[njr-11]

Reopening. TCK is still needed.

[gavinking]

@njr-11 I was wondering if it would be better to track the TCK work in the TCK issue, rather than leaving lots of issues open.