# The Java EE 7 Tutorial

# 41.1 Overview of String-Based Criteria API Queries

String-based Criteria API queries ("string-based queries") are Java programming language queries that use strings rather than strongly typed metamodel objects to specify entity attributes when traversing a data hierarchy. String-based queries are constructed similarly to metamodel queries, can be static or dynamic, and can express the same kind of queries and operations as strongly typed metamodel queries.

Strongly typed metamodel queries are the preferred method of constructing Criteria API queries.

The main advantage of string-based queries over metamodel queries is the ability to construct Criteria queries at development time without the need to generate static metamodel classes or otherwise access dynamically generated metamodel classes.

The main disadvantage to string-based queries is their lack of type safety; this problem may lead to runtime errors due to type mismatches that would be caught at development time if you used strongly typed metamodel queries.

For information on constructing criteria queries, see Chapter 40, "Using the Criteria API to Create Queries".