Hibernate version: 3.1

In the document it's given that

11.4.3. Criteria queries
HQL is extremely powerful but some developers prefer to build queries dynamically, using an object-oriented
API, rather than building query strings.

Can anybody compare these two approaches for retrieving data?
Is there any overhead for using Criteria for simple
queries instead of HQL?

Please advise as currently we are handling a large project and we have urgently take a policy decision which will have long term effect.

Thanks in advance.
Girish Varde

No there is no overhead. One thing is maybe that hql is more readable then if you have your queries defined with criteria.

Criteria queries should only be used for building queries dynamicallly, or if you need the projection stuff it does because that's pretty cool

otherwise HQL is better