I'm not a Spring/SpringData person, but don't you need to use the @Param annotation to bind the parameters to the placeholders in the query?
@Repository @Transactional public interface UserRepository extends CrudRepository<User, Long>{         @Modifying       @Query("update User u set u.userDesc = :userDesc where u.userName = :userName")       public int updateUser(@Param("userDesc") String userDesc, @Param("userName") String userName); <div class="clear"/><div class="postText ">The problem was that I was using the wrong imports. <br/> <br/> I was using these: <br/> <br/> <textarea name="code" class="java" cols="60" rows="10">import org.springframework.data.jdbc.repository.query.Modifying; import org.springframework.data.jdbc.repository.query.Query;

and should've used these:
import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.Modifying; import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.Query;

Thanks anyway.