A method for navigating relationships between beans using filters and container managed relationships is provided. With the method, filters are specified in the relationship definition of a deployment descriptor of a bean. The filters generate additional predicates to the WHERE clauses in SQL SELECT statements generated based on the contents of the deployment descriptor. Moreover, these filters may be defined such that method parameters may be passed into the resulting deployed code to thereby make them more flexible. Therefore, with the method, rather than defining filters programmatically in methods of a bean's implementation class, filters are defined declaratively in the deployment descriptor of the bean. Since these filters are specified in the deployment descriptor of the bean, they are accessible to clients of the bean through the local interface.