What is Hibernate in Java?

This article is explaining you about the core concepts of Hibernate framework in Java. You can get the answer of the question "What is Hibernate in Java?".

What is Hibernate in Java?

What is Hibernate in Java? - Hibernate is ORM tool in Java.

Are you beginner in ORM framework in Java programming Language? Are you looking for the information about the Hibernate ORM? Then this is the best place to learn about Hibernate Framework in Java. The Hibernate in Java is framework used for developing the data access layer in Java based applications. This article gives you the complete information about Hibernate framework in Java.

There are many different databases such as Oracle, MySQL, MS SQL Server etc... Developers are using JDBC to develop the code for database interaction between application and the database. JDBC programming requires lot of work to create SQL statement, execute the statement and then process the results. It is the responsibility of the programmer to handle the exceptions occurred in runtime. Exception handling is also a very big task and it requires a lot of effort to write good code. To solve all these issues ORM tool was developed. The ORM tool stands for Object Relational Mapping tool and it takes care to generating the sql statements, executing the sql statement and finally processing the result. It also handles the exceptions occurred in the program. Hibernate is one of the ORM tool.

Features of ORM

Here are the features and benefits of ORM tools:

  • The ORM tool is great tool which is used to map the logical business model (POJO class) with the relational database (physical model).
     
  • The ORM tool is very useful in reducing the amount of coding. ORM tools helps the developers to quickly develop the data access layer. Developers mostly concentrate on the business functions and uses the ORM tool for CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) operation.
     
  • Easy to adapt the changes in database structure. If you have to change the database structure you just have to change the definition of model class the ORM will automatically change the SQL and Select queries. This eases the development and maintenance of enterprise application very easily.
     
  • The ORM tools provides rich query language which based on the domain model (POJO) class. Developers writes the query using the domain model and the the ORM tool generates the SQL queries automatically. So, programmer concentrates on the business login and the ORM tool takes care of the persistence, retrieval and query the database.
     
  • ORM tool support relationship amongst the objects.
     
  • It supports lazy loading and many other optimization functions.
     
  • It also supports the concurrency.
     
  • It also supports primary and secondary level cache.
     
  • Transaction management also a very important feature of the database. The ORM tools also supports transaction management and error handling.
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What is Hibernate in Java?

The Hibernate is popular ORM tool developed in Java programming language and it supports all the major Databases. You can switch to another database simply change dialect in the configuration file. The Hibernate framework is free software distributed under GNU Lesser General Public License.

The Hibernate framework is Object Relational Mapping tool which is used by the Java developers to map the Java objects to the relational database. Hibernate is feature rich tool which is used to develop enterprise applications. It can be used with Java SE  application and web applications. It can easily used with JSP, Servlets, Struts. Spring Web, JSF and other Java based we application development frameworks.

Hibernate is also used with JPA as persistence provider. Hibernate also supports primary-level and secondary-level caching. You can use any cache provider library.

Hibernate components

Hibernate framework includes following components which makes it pluggable and you can use the components you just need.

  • Hibernate Core: This is also know as Hibernate ORM. Hibernate Core is the main component of the Hibernate architecture. This components is responsible for performing the CRUD operations.
     
  • Hibernate Annotations: This is merged with Hibernate Core in the release of Hibernate version 3.6. Hibernate Annotation is a way to provide the mapping metadata to the Hibernate runtime.
     
  • Hibernate Entity Manager: The HibernateEntity Manager provides the API for performing the CRUD operations. Though HibernateEntity manager programmer interacts with the database.
     
  • Hibernate Envers: Is and Easy Entity Auditing library.
     
  • Hibernate OGM: The OGM stands for Object/Grid Mapper which is an extension to store data in a NoSQL store.
     
  • Hibernate Shards:  The Hibernate Shards is used for horizontal partitioning for multiple relational databases. Although Hibernate Shards is not fully compatible with Hibernate 4.x. Check the compatibility in the current release specs.
     
  • Hibernate Search: The Hibernate Search is hibernate library to access the Apache Lucene full text engine from Hibernate.
      
  • Hibernate Tools: It includes the  Eclipse plugins, Ant tasks etc...
     
  • Hibernate Validator: Used for validation in the POJO class.

Where to learn Hibernate?

We have lots of tutorial on Hibernate latest version. You can check it at our Hibernate tutorials home page.