·    Hibernate is open source light weight ORM (Object Relational Mapping) tool

·    It is a powerful, ultra –high performance object/relational persistence and query service for Java

·    It simplifies the development of java application to interact with database.

·     It lets us develop persistent objects following common Java idioms – including association, inheritance, polymorphism, composition and the Java collections framework

·    It internally uses the JDBC API to interact with the database.

·    Hibernate Query language is designed as a “minimal” object oriented extension to SQL, provide an elegant bridge between the object and relational worlds. 

What make up a Hibernate application?

·    Standard domain object defined in Java as POJO’s nothing more.

·   Hibernate mapping file

·  Hibernate configuration file

·  Hibernate Runtime

·  Database

 Why use Hibernate?

·     Simple to get up and running

·     Transparent Persistence achieved using Reflection

·     Isn’t intrusive to the build/deploy process

·     Persistence objects can follow common OOPS principles.

·     In most cases Java object do not even know they can be persistence

·     Java developers can focus on object model

·     Feel much more natural than Entity Beans or JDBC coding

·      Query mechanism closely resembles SQL so learning curve is low