JPQL IN clause: Java-Arrays (or Lists, Sets...)?

I'm not sure for JPA 1.0 but you can pass a Collection in JPA 2.0:

String qlString = "select item from Item item where item.name IN :names"; 
Query q = em.createQuery(qlString, Item.class);

List<String> names = Arrays.asList("foo", "bar");

q.setParameter("names", names);
List<Item> actual = q.getResultList();

assertNotNull(actual);
assertEquals(2, actual.size());

Tested with EclipseLInk. With Hibernate 3.5.1, you'll need to surround the parameter with parenthesis:

String qlString = "select item from Item item where item.name IN (:names)";

But this is a bug, the JPQL query in the previous sample is valid JPQL. See HHH-5126.

The oracle limit is 1000 parameters. The issue has been resolved by hibernate in version 4.1.7 although by splitting the passed parameter list in sets of 500 see JIRA HHH-1123