foreword to the revised edition

When Hibernate in Action was published two years ago, it was immediately recognized not only as the definitive book on Hibernate, but also as the definitive work on object/relational mapping.

In the intervening time, the persistence landscape has changed with the release of the Java Persistence API, the new standard for object/relational mapping for Java EE and Java SE which was developed under the Java Community Process as part of the Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 Specification.

In developing the Java Persistence API, the EJB 3.0 Expert Group benefitted heavily from the experience of the O/R mapping frameworks already in use in the Java community. As one of the leaders among these, Hibernate has had a very significant influence on the technical direction of Java Persistence. This was due not only to the participation of Gavin King and other members of the Hibernate team in the EJB 3.0 standardization effort, but was also due in large part to the direct and pragmatic approach that Hibernate has taken towards O/R mapping and to the simplicity, clarity, and power of its APIs—and their resulting appeal to the Java community.

In addition to their contributions to Java Persistence, the Hibernate developers also have taken major steps forward for Hibernate with the Hibernate 3 release described in this book. Among these are support for operations over large datasets; additional and more sophisticated mapping options, especially for handling legacy databases; data filters; strategies for managing conversations; and integration with Seam, the new framework for web application development with JSF and EJB 3.0.

Java Persistence with Hibernate is therefore considerably more than simply a second edition to Hibernate in Action. It provides a comprehensive overview of all the capabilities of the Java Persistence API in addition to those of Hibernate 3, as well as a detailed comparative analysis of the two. It describes how Hibernate has been used to implement the Java Persistence standard, and how to leverage the Hibernate extensions to Java Persistence.

More important, throughout the presentation of Hibernate and Java Persistence, Christian Bauer and Gavin King illustrate and explain the fundamental principles and decisions that need to be taken into account in both the design and use of an object/relational mapping framework. The insights they provide into the underlying issues of ORM give the reader a deep understanding into the effective application of ORM as an enterprise technology.

Java Persistence with Hibernate thus reaches out to a wide range of developers—from newcomers to object/relational mapping to experienced developers—seeking to learn more about cutting-edge technological innovations in the Java community that have occurred and are continuing to emerge as a result of this work.

Linda DeMichiel

Specification Lead Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 and Java Persistence

Sun Microsystems