intermediateJPQL, Native Queries, Specifications & Criteria API

When would you reach for a Specification instead of a derived query method or JPQL?

When a query's conditions are genuinely dynamic at runtime — for example, a search form where the user may supply any combination of optional filters. A fixed derived method name or JPQL string can't express "this condition, but only if it was supplied"; Specifications compose predicates conditionally at runtime.

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