[Building Sakai] generic DAO question

[Jim Eng]

Hi Aaron,

I have an object of type org.sakaiproject.genericdao.api.search.Search  
that expresses a set of Restrictions. I would like to do a query that  
gets the set of values for a particular property from the set of  
things selected by this Search.  It looks to me like I may need to  
implement a special method in my project's DAO that would turn the  
Search object into part of an HQL statement to select the unique  
values for the property where the Restrictions of the search are  
honored.  Does that sound right?  Or is there some way to use the  
search object directly?

To give you an idea of what I'm looking at, I think the HQL might look  
something like this:

select item.importOrderId from EvalmonitorItem item where  
item.createdDate < 'yyyy-mm-dd' and item.entityType == 'EvalTemplate'  
group by item.importOrderId

where the Search object has two Restrictions (one for "createdDate"  
and one for "entityType").  But I don't know whether this is correct  
HQL and whether it eliminates duplicate values (as I'd like).

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Jim