Hibernate Intoduction and Overview

What is Hibernate

Hibernate is an open source object/relational mapping tool for Java. Hibernate lets you develop persistent classes following common Java idiom - including association, inheritance, polymorphism, composition and the Java collections framework.

Hibernate not only takes care of the mapping from Java classes to database tables (and from Java data types to SQL data types), but also provides data query and retrieval facilities and can significantly reduce development time otherwise spent with manual data handling in SQL and JDBC.

It's create a “virtual object database” that can be used from within the programming language.

Hibernate is a persistence framework which is used to persist data from Java environment to database. Persistence is a process of storing the data to some permanent medium and retrieving it back at any point of time even after the application that had created the data ended.

Hibernate sits between traditional Java objects and database server to handle all the work in persisting those objects based on the appropriate O/R mechanisms and patterns.

Features of Hibernate

• Transparent persistence without byte code processing
• Object-oriented query language
• Object / Relational mappings
• Automatic primary key generation
• Object/Relational mapping definition
• HDLCA (Hibernate Dual-Layer Cache Architecture)
• High performance
• J2EE integration

Advantages of Hibernate

• Hibernate takes care of mapping Java classes to database tables using XML files and without writing any line of code.
• Provides simple APIs for storing and retrieving Java objects directly to and from the database.
• If there is change in Database or in any table then the only need to change XML file properties.
• Abstract away the unfamiliar SQL types and provide us to work around familiar Java Objects.
• Hibernate does not require an application server to operate.
• Manipulates Complex associations of objects of your database.
• Minimize database access with smart fetching strategies.
• Provides Simple querying of data.

Hibernate is Free Software. The LGPL license is sufficiently flexible to allow the use of Hibernate in both open source and commercial projects (see the LicenseFAQ for details). Hibernate is available for download at http://www.hibernate.org/.

NEXT READ Hibernate Architecture

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