How and where are Annotations used in Java?

Annotations are meta-meta-objects which can be used to describe other meta-objects. Meta-objects are classes, fields and methods. Asking an object for its meta-object (e.g. anObj.getClass() ) is called introspection. The introspection can go further and we can ask a meta-object what are its annotations (e.g. aClass.getAnnotations). Introspection and annotations belong to what is called reflection and meta-programming.

An annotation needs to be interpreted in one way or another to be useful. Annotations can be interpreted at development-time by the IDE or the compiler, or at run-time by a framework.

Annotation processing is a very powerful mechanism and can be used in a lot of different ways:

• to describe constraints or usage of an element: e.g. @Deprecated, @Override, or @NotNull
• to describe the "nature" of an element, e.g. @Entity, @TestCase, @WebService
• to describe the behavior of an element: @Statefull, @Transaction
• to describe how to process the element: @Column, @XmlElement

In all cases, an annotation is used to describe the element and clarify its meaning.

Prior to JDK5, information that is now expressed with annotations needed to be stored somewhere else, and XML files were frequently used. But it is more convenient to use annotations because they will belong to the Java code itself, and are hence much easier to manipulate than XML.

Usage of annotations:

• Documentation, e.g. XDoclet
• Compilation
• IDE
• Testing framework, e.g. JUnit
• IoC container e.g. as Spring
• Serialization, e.g. XML
• Aspect-oriented programming (AOP), e.g. Spring AOP
• Application servers, e.g. EJB container, Web Service
• Object-relational mapping (ORM), e.g. Hibernate, JPA
• and many more...

...have a look for instance at the project Lombok, which uses annotations to define how to generate equals or hashCode methods.

There are 2 views of annotations

1. user view, most of the time, annotations work like a shortcut, save you some key strokes, or make your program more readable

2. vendor view, the processor's view of annotation is more of light weighted 'interface', your program DOES confront to SOMETHING but without explicitly "implements" the particular interface(here aka the annotation)

e.g. in jpa you define something like

@Entity class Foo {...}

instead of

class Foo implements Entity {...}

both speak the same thing "Foo is an Entity class"

Frameworks like Hibernate were lots of configuration/mapping is required uses Annotations heavily.

Take a look at Hibernate Annotations

JPA (from Java EE 5) is an excellent example of the (over)use of annotations. Java EE 6 will also introduce annotations in lot of new areas, such as RESTful webservices and new annotations for under each the good old Servlet API.

Here are several resources:

• Sun - The Java Persistence API
• Java EE 5 tutorial - JPA
• Introducing the Java EE 6 platform (check all three pages).

It is not only the configuration specifics which are to / can be taken over by annotations, but they can also be used to control the behaviour. You see this good back in the Java EE 6's JAX-RS examples.

Annotations may be used as an alternative to external configuration files, but cannot be considered a complete replacement. You can find many examples where annotationi have been used to replace configuration files, like Hibernate, JPA, EJB 3 and almost all the technologies included in Java EE.

Anyway this is not always good choice. The purpose of using configuration files is usually to separate the code from the details of the environment where the application is running. In such situations, and mostly when the configuration is used to map the application to the structure of an external system, annotation are not a good replacement for configuration file, as they bring you to include the details of the external system inside the source code of your application. Here external files are to be considered the best choice, otherwise you'll need to modify the source code and to recompile every time you change a relevant detail in the execution environment.

Annotations are much more suited to decorate the source code with extra information that instruct processing tools, both at compile time and at runtime, to handle classes and class structures in special way. @Override and JUnit's @Test are good examples of such a usage, already explained in detail in other answers.

In the end the rule is always the same: keep inside the source the things that change with the source, and keep outside the source the things that change independently from the source.

It attaches additional information about code by (a) compiler check or (b) code analysis

**

• Following are the Built-in annotations:: 2 types

**

Type 1) Annotations applied to java code:

@Override // gives error if signature is wrong while overriding.
Public boolean equals (Object Obj) 

@Deprecated // indicates the deprecated method
Public doSomething()....

@SuppressWarnings() // stops the warnings from printing while compiling.
SuppressWarnings({"unchecked","fallthrough"})

Type 2) Annotations applied to other annotations:

@Retention - Specifies how the marked annotation is stored—Whether in code only, compiled into the class, or available at run-time through reflection.

@Documented - Marks another annotation for inclusion in the documentation.

@Target - Marks another annotation to restrict what kind of java elements the annotation may be applied to

@Inherited - Marks another annotation to be inherited to subclasses of annotated class (by default annotations are not inherited to subclasses).

**

• Custom Annotations::

** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_annotation#Custom_annotations

FOR BETTER UNDERSTANDING TRY BELOW LINK:ELABORATE WITH EXAMPLES

http://www.javabeat.net/2007/08/annotations-in-java-5-0/

Following are some of the places where you can use annotations.

a. Annotations can be used by compiler to detect errors and suppress warnings
b. Software tools can use annotations to generate code, xml files, documentation etc., For example, Javadoc use annotations while generating java documentation for your class.
c. Runtime processing of the application can be possible via annotations.
d. You can use annotations to describe the constraints (Ex: @Null, @NotNull, @Max, @Min, @Email).
e. Annotations can be used to describe type of an element. Ex: @Entity, @Repository, @Service, @Controller, @RestController, @Resource etc.,
f. Annotation can be used to specify the behaviour. Ex: @Transactional, @Stateful
g. Annotation are used to specify how to process an element. Ex: @Column, @Embeddable, @EmbeddedId
h. Test frameworks like junit and testing use annotations to define test cases (@Test), define test suites (@Suite) etc.,
i. AOP (Aspect Oriented programming) use annotations (@Before, @After, @Around etc.,)
j. ORM tools like Hibernate, Eclipselink use annotations

You can refer this link for more details on annotations.

You can refer this link to see how annotations are used to build simple test suite.