Hibernate Annotations - Which is better, field or property access?

Question

This question is somewhat related to Hibernate Annotation Placement Question.

But I want to know which is better? Access via properties or access vi

Answer 1

I prefer field access, because that way I'm not forced to provide getter/setter for each property.

A quick survey via Google suggests that field access is the majority (e.g., http://java.dzone.com/tips/12-feb-jpa-20-why-accesstype).

I believe field access is the idiom recommended by Spring, but I can't find a reference to back that up.

There's a related SO question that tried to measure performance and came to the conclusion that there's "no difference".