An annotation, in the JAVA programming language is a special form of syntactic metadata that can be added to Java Source Code. Classes, methods, variables parameters and packages may be annotated. Unlike Java doc TAGS, Java annotation are reflective, in that they are embedded in class files generated by the compiler and may be RETAINED by the java VM to make retrievable at run-time.

Annotation is basically to ATTACH metadata to method, class or package. Metadata is used by the compiler to perform some basic compile-time CHECKING

An annotation, in the java programming language is a special form of syntactic metadata that can be added to Java Source Code. Classes, methods, variables parameters and packages may be annotated. Unlike Java doc tags, Java annotation are reflective, in that they are embedded in class files generated by the compiler and may be retained by the java VM to make retrievable at run-time.

Annotation is basically to attach metadata to method, class or package. Metadata is used by the compiler to perform some basic compile-time checking