I used to use .* for everything and then I studied, took and passed my
java certification.
Now I *never* use .* and always use the full name. The primary reason being you may have multiple classes with the same name and you want to be as clear as possible about which one you are referencing. This problem is *ESPECIALLY PREVELENT IN
J2EE APPLICATIONS* since you may have multiple forms of the same file, especially for containers.
For example, the same data might be passed as DatabaseDTO, EJB, DAO, MessageBeanDTO (JaxP), WebServiceDTO, EJBServiceDTO, etc. Its common for some of these files to have the same name so using package naming is very important.