Using java.sql.Date in the HQL , using a prepared statement it fails to return the correct result.

When i query by the string rep of the Date this works , but what about the object comparison itself.

Using Hibernate.DATE

use equals, not ==
beware the precision, some java.util.date can be more precise than the one you get from DB.

There is something more to care about: by default, Hibernate will map java.util.Date instances to a JDBC java.sql.Timestamp (unless you specify a type date or time - not timestamp in your mapping file).

When reading your data back, your original date properties will be initialized with java.sql.Timestamp rather than java.util.Date... This may cause problems later in your code if you try to compare these fields with other java.util.Date - see http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/sql/Timestamp.html

To avoid problems, we used to implement a special UserType that converts timestamps back to util.dates.