Java Persistence with Hibernate: Revised Edition of Hibernate in Action

As of the writing of this review in early 2008, there is no other work in the marketplace quite like this text. At over 800 pages, Bauer and King cover a lot of ground, starting with the object/relational persistence paradigm and continuing with domain models, mapping, and conversations, addressing specialized situations along the way such as working with legacy databases. Database development is not for the faint of heart, and serious work in this space requires understanding of both object-oriented technology and relational database theory, not to mention the associated business domains. Although this book has received a relatively high amount of positive reviews, readers have also understandably shared their complaints. While at the same time Java Persistence with Hibernate is probably not for everyone, there really are not that many alternatives to learning the necessary material. As with other development frameworks, it is a given that familiarity with the online documentation for Hibernate is required, with the realization that this documentation really only starts to be of benefit once the associated tools start being used. This book provides solid background to prepare the reader for the road ahead, but the reader should also be reminded that the entire book does not need to be read, nor does the material need to be read in order from front to back in order to prepare for that road. Much of the material will probably just not make sense until one gets their feet wet with the technologies. These are the reasons I choose to refer to this text as graduate school training. As Immanuel Kant, the great German philosopher, once said, "experience teaches nothing without theory, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play". The change in name for this second edition of the book reflect the fact that Hibernate is now an implementation of the Java Persistence API. Be aware that the authors traverse back and fourth between the conformance of Hibernate to JPA, and what Hibernate provides apart from JPA. I think the decision of the authors to present material on these technologies side-by-side was a wise one, because it helps keep the reader reminded that these are not separate technologies and that there are architectural tradeoffs between sticking to JPA and using Hibernate functionality beyond the specification. Well recommended.

I bought this book long time ago. When I come back today, I find some readers gave bad reviews on this good book. I have to say some my impression about this book: 1. It is not a book for dummy users, it covers a lot of very deep thoughts about the Java persistence. 2. I found it is hard to understand all its contents the first time when I read it. But, until I have to use Hibernate heavily in some projects, I start to read it again and found nearly every question I have in the real projects. 3. It contains many design ideas in creating your database and also how to use Hibernate properly with quite a lot of good code as examples. 4. It is definitely the best reference book out there to cover Hibernate 3.0 usage so far in the book market. Don't be fooled by those dummy readers, decent developers need this book to resolve problems.

If you want to *understand* Hibernate/JPA and ORM then this book is for you. Besides being most complete reference of how-to's of Hibernate/JPA it really goes a long way to explain why Java persistence is the way it is and why things should be done one way and not another. If you are serious about Java development with persistence objects then keep this book close at all times.

What I liked about this book is that I actually can read it as a literary book, it's not only a reference. Something to keep by the bed. Gave me the whole picture (Object Relation Mapping in general, it's place in J2EE, Domain Driven Design, testing etc) and gory details (caching, native SQL, batching, extended PersistenceContext, etc). 16-page index including annotations, far better than googling for Answers. In case you're only looking for the JPA Annotations details (or vice versa) you need to be alert when reading - after choosing JPA as our implementation strategy, I could skip many paragraphs and get through faster. If you really want to understand ORM through Hibernate, this is all you need. And time to read the 841 pages, of course.

The paper alone in this book is probably worth the money you pay for it, weighing in at 904 pages. However, I guarantee you that they will become the most important 904 pages of your career. Hibernate is a powerful framework, but it is also a very complex beast. That complexity is the nature of the persistence business. Whether you use SQL, object-relational mapping, or an object database, you are going to face the same problem in every case. Let me give you a hint, it isn't a problem with the framework. It's the database. The database tier is the most expensive tier to scale. If you don't treat it correctly, your application will be expensive and its performance will be dismal. If you want to know how to write applications using Hibernate, then you need this book on your desk. Dare I say that this is the best book on core Hibernate principals that will ever be written. How can I make such a claim? I can say this because the questions about Hibernate and ORM that need to be asked are not going to change very much and this book answers them all. In that sense, the book is timeless. This book answers all of the burning questions you have been dying to ask about Hibernate. "Why do I get the dreaded LazyInitializationException and what does it mean?" "What is the best way to map collections?" "Should my collections be lazy or non-lazy?" "How do I implement the Open Session In View pattern?" "What is a persistence context?" "What are detatched objects?" "How do I avoid the use of detatched objects?" "What's the difference between saveOrUpdate and merge?" "Do I need to implement equals() and hashCode() for every entity?" "What is the difference between Hibernate and JPA?" "Should I use a DAO layer and if so, how should it be designed?" "What is Seam?" ...and may other questions. Just browse the hibernate forums to get an idea. Do yourself and your career a favor by clearning a weekend (perhaps several) and read this book cover to cover, rinse, and repeat.