Another reason why we need properties in the language is ... for "native" database queries, eg.

Person warMonger = createQuery(new WhereLikePredicate(Person.name, "G.W. Bush"));

where Person.name is a property, ie. Person.class has an accessor getName().

In this case, our JPA queries are refactorable, yippee! If you have a real query, it's more obvious (no offense), eg.

      SelectQuery query = createSelectQuery();
      query.setTitle("Fido's in region %s", regionId);
      query.selectAll(dog);
      query.selectExclude(dog.address);
      query.select(organisation.organisationId, organisation.organisationName);
      query.join(dog, organisation, region);
      query.whereEquals(region.regionId, regionId); 
      query.whereStartsWithIgnoreCase(dog.dogName, "fido"); 
      query.whereIsNotNull(organisation.organisationName); 
      query.whereIs(organisation.active, true); 
      query.orderBy(organisation.organisationId, dog.dogName); 
      query.limit(100); 

as presented in the SQL Objects precursor to the Jelly Bean series.

Having JPA queries in strings (and any references in strings) is something that i hope people cannot tolerate going forward!? ;)