Using Hibernate-Search for Complex Queries instead of Criteria API

In an app using Wicket+Spring+JPA/Hibernate stack, I have an Inbox/Search page which should have quite complex search capabilities, where records saved in a database are filtered using a myriad of filtering options. So far I've used JPA Criteria API to build the database query but it's getting quite messy. I was wondering if Hibernate-Search would be a good fit for this even though I don't really need any full-text search开发者_运维问答 capabilities, I just feel (from what I read about it) that producing the query might be a bit easier?

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Sorry, but Hibernate Search is based on Lucence. It is not just an other query language.

Lucene does not serach for entities in your database, it search for attibutes in the Lucene index. Hibernate Search add the functionality to connect the Entities from your Database to the Lucene Index.

Hibernate Search and Lucene are create tool when you need advanced full text search. But if you don't need it, it is only a lot of unnesseary work (and problems).

So, as long as you do not use Lucene, Hibernate Search does not fit your needs.

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The primary use case for Hibernate Search is fulltext search. However, it can also be used to index/search simple attributes/criteria. Whether the syntax for writing the queries is simpler than a criteria query is a matter of taste. If you are not using the fulltext search capabilities you have to consider that you are adding an additional step in your application. The search query will be run against the Lucene index which will return entity ids (unless projection is used). The matching entities will then be fetched from the database. On the other hand, once you use Hibernate Search it is easy to "improve" your search by adding some fulltext search capabilities to some of your criteria (if possible).

Whether or not you are using Search, I think the key is to write some sort of framework which programmatically builds your queries - Search or Criteria queries.