Why does the aggregate max method only extend Number?

I have a table in my application that keeps track of users’ settings. The SQL definition of the table is something like this (PostgreSQL):

CREATE SEQUENCE settings_id_seq;
CREATE TABLE settings
(
    id         BIGINT    NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT nextval('settings_id_seq'),
    user_id    BIGINT    NOT NULL,
    created_at TIMESTAMP NOT NULL,
    definition TEXT      NOT NULL
);
ALTER SEQUENCE settings_id_seq OWNED BY settings.id;
CREATE INDEX settings_user_id_index ON settings (user_id) ;
CREATE INDEX settings_created_at_index ON settings (created_at) ;

This table provides an (immutable) history of changes made to the settings for each user. The current settings for a user is the respective row with the maximum created_at timestamp, per user. Adding new settings simply adds a new row to the table with the new settings and a new (monotonic) created_at timestamp.

One way to find the current settings for each of the users is to use the following SQL:

SELECT s1.* FROM settings s1 
  WHERE s1.created_at = (SELECT max(s2.created_at) FROM settings s2 WHERE s2.user_id = s1.user_id);

I have attempted to recreate this SQL using a CriteriaQuery, but I ran into a problem with the code in that the CriteriaBuilder.max function will only accept * extends Number types, and my entity column is a LocalDateTime.

I don’t understand why Hibernate has this collation restriction on CriteriaBuilder.max when clearly SQL does not have this restriction. (In fact, with SQL you can even do a max on TEXT columns. ¯_(ツ)_/¯)

Why not have CriteriaBuilder.max use, say, * extends Comparable instead?

As an aside, I’ve had folks recommend using an implementation of the following SQL to avoid the problem with CriteriaBuilder.max:

SELECT s1.* from settings s1
  WHERE s1.created_at = (SELECT s2.created_at FROM settings s2 ORDER BY s2.created_at DESC LIMIT 1);

But, I haven’t yet got to the bottom of limiting the subquery.

Does anybody have any other ideas?

Cheers, S t u a r t .

PS: I’ve thought of using CriteriaBuilder.max on the id column, which gets around the Number problem, but that kinda feels dirty.