Hibernate..What you need to know to get started

__What is Hibernate?__ Hibernate is a powerful, ultra-high performance object/relational persistence and query service for Java.\\ Hibernate lets you develop persistent classes following common Java idiom - including association, inheritance, polymorphism, composition, and the Java collections framework. \\ Hibernate allows you to express queries in its own portable SQL extension (HQL), as well as in native SQL, or with Java-based Criteria and Example objects. \\Hibernate supports the EJB 3.0/JSR-220 persistence standardization effort and implements it with Hibernate Annotations and Hibernate EntityManager. \\ Her is the Hibernate's Feature List : * [Transparent Persistence|http://www.hibernate.org/302.html] * [Flexible Mapping|http://www.hibernate.org/309.html] * [Query Facilities|http://www.hibernate.org/306.html] * [Metadata Facilities|http://www.hibernate.org/310.html] * [HMLCA|http://www.hibernate.org/307.html] * [Performance|http://www.hibernate.org/303.html] * [J2EE integration|http://www.hibernate.org/304.html] * [Extension Points|http://www.hibernate.org/308.html] * [More Features|http://www.hibernate.org/305.html] and this are the Product Evaluation FAQ This FAQ is intended to answer common questions asked by people evaluating Hibernate, and refute a number of misleading statements made by a certain competing commercial vendor.\\ * [Does Hibernate implement a standard?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A2] * [Now that EJB 3.0 is out, is Hibernate dead?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A3] * [Is Hibernate "unsupported"?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A4] * [Is Hibernate "under-documented"?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A4] * [Is Hibernate easy to use?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A5] * [Is Hibernate mature?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A6] * [What if JBoss turns evil and creates a commercial fork of Hibernate?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A7] * [Can I embed Hibernate in my commercial application?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A8] * [Why isn't Hibernate used for the EJB 3.0 Reference Implementation?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A9] * [Aren't stored procedures always faster than dynamic SQL?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A10] * [Won't my application run slower if I use Hibernate?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A11] * [Does Hibernate have a GUI?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A12] * [How can I use Hibernate in a J2EE environment?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A13] * [Does Hibernate implement connection pooling?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A14] * [Does Hibernate implement prepared statement caching?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A15] * [Does Hibernate implement attribute-level lazy fetching?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A16] * [Does Hibernate fully support polymorphism?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A17] * [Does Hibernate have "fetch plans"?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A18] * [Does Hibernate have "fetch profiles"?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A19] * [Does Hibernate support a clustered cache?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A20] * [Does Hibernate support a query result set cache?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A21] * [Does Hibernate support handwritten SQL?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A22] * [Does Hibernate support stored procedures?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A23] * [Does Hibernate support composite keys?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A24] * [Does Hibernate support (my favorite association style here)?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A25] * [Is Hibernate appropriate for use with legacy data?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A26] * [Is Hibernate suitable for use in batch/bulk processing?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A27] * [Can Hibernate persist instance variables directly?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A28] * [Does Hibernate support monitoring?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A29] * [You get what you pay for, right? |http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A30] * [Should I believe what commercial vendors tell me about Hibernate?|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A31] * [Damn, you guys sound so arrogant!|http://www.hibernate.org/263.html#A32] For more information visit the [Hibernate Main Page|http://www.hibernate.org] !!Hibernate Tutorials *[Hibernate Tutorial - The Road to Hibernate| http://www.gloegl.de/5.html]. *[HIBERNATE Tutorial|http://www.hibernate.org/hib_docs/v3/reference/en/html/index.html]