当我不知道哪些输入将用于哪些数据时，我通常使用Criteria。就像在一个搜索表单上，用户可以输入1到50个项目中的任何一个，我不知道他们会搜索什么。在检查用户正在搜索的内容时，很容易将更多内容添加到条件中。我认为在这种情况下放置HQL查询会更麻烦一些。当我确切地知道我想要什么时，HQL是很棒的。

HQL更容易阅读，更容易使用Eclipse Hibernate插件等工具进行调试，也更容易记录日志。条件查询更适合构建动态查询，其中许多行为都是在运行时确定的。如果你不知道SQL，我可以理解使用Criteria查询，但总的来说，如果我知道我想要什么，我更喜欢HQL。

对于动态查询，我也更喜欢使用条件查询。但我更喜欢hql删除查询，例如，如果从父id 'xyz'的子表中删除所有记录，这很容易由hql实现，但对于标准API，首先我们必须触发n个删除查询，其中n是子表记录的数量。

我不想在这里白费口舌，但有一点很重要，那就是Criteria查询现在已被弃用。使用HQL。

HQL is to perform both select and non-select operations on the data, but Criteria is only for selecting the data, we cannot perform non-select operations using criteria HQL is suitable for executing Static Queries, where as Criteria is suitable for executing Dynamic Queries HQL doesn’t support pagination concept, but we can achieve pagination with Criteria Criteria used to take more time to execute then HQL With Criteria we are safe with SQL Injection because of its dynamic query generation but in HQL as your queries are either fixed or parametrized, there is no safe from SQL Injection.

源

HQL和criteriaQuery在性能上是有区别的，每次你使用criteriaQuery发起查询时，它会为表名创建一个新的别名，这个别名不会反映在任何DB的最后一个查询缓存中。这会导致编译生成的SQL的开销，需要更多的时间来执行。

关于抓取策略[http://www.hibernate.org/315.html]

Criteria respects the laziness settings in your mappings and guarantees that what you want loaded is loaded. This means one Criteria query might result in several SQL immediate SELECT statements to fetch the subgraph with all non-lazy mapped associations and collections. If you want to change the "how" and even the "what", use setFetchMode() to enable or disable outer join fetching for a particular collection or association. Criteria queries also completely respect the fetching strategy (join vs select vs subselect). HQL respects the laziness settings in your mappings and guarantees that what you want loaded is loaded. This means one HQL query might result in several SQL immediate SELECT statements to fetch the subgraph with all non-lazy mapped associations and collections. If you want to change the "how" and even the "what", use LEFT JOIN FETCH to enable outer-join fetching for a particular collection or nullable many-to-one or one-to-one association, or JOIN FETCH to enable inner join fetching for a non-nullable many-to-one or one-to-one association. HQL queries do not respect any fetch="join" defined in the mapping document.