JPA and Hibernate - Criteria vs. JPQL or HQL

java hibernate hql criteria hibernate-criteria
cretzel picture cretzel · Oct 13, 2008 · Viewed 146.2k times · Source

What are the pros and cons of using Criteria or HQL? The Criteria API is a nice object-oriented way to express queries in Hibernate, but sometimes Criteria Queries are more difficult to understand/build than HQL.

When do you use Criteria and when HQL? What do you prefer in which use cases? Or is it just a matter of taste?

Answer

cretzel picture cretzel · Oct 13, 2008

I mostly prefer Criteria Queries for dynamic queries. For example it is much easier to add some ordering dynamically or leave some parts (e.g. restrictions) out depending on some parameter.

On the other hand I'm using HQL for static and complex queries, because it's much easier to understand/read HQL. Also, HQL is a bit more powerful, I think, e.g. for different join types.

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