Return row # for ranking in Hibernate SQL

[Joshua Elkino]

Is there a way to return a row #?
I'm trying to rank something based on a sorted column, but i'm not sure how to get the row number w/out looping through the entire resultset with a counter and matching my expression.

I'm using hibernate, but i dont even know if there is a simple method in SQL.

[Edvins Reisons]

I believe that this is database-specific, like rownum in Oracle.