Book excerpt: If you’re looking for a short, sweet, and simple introduction (or reintroduction) to Hibernate, this is the book you want. Through clear real-world examples, you’ll learn Hibernate and object-relational mapping from the ground up, starting with the basics. Then you’ll dive into the framework’s moving parts to understand how they work in action. Storing Java objects in relational databases is usually a challenging and complex task for any Java developer, experienced or not. This book, like others in the Just series, delivers a concise, example-driven tutorial for Java beginners. You’ll gain enough knowledge and confidence to start working on real-world projects with Hibernate. Compare how JDBC and Hibernate work with object persistence Learn how annotations are used to create Hibernate applications Understand how to persist and retrieve Java data structures Focus on the fundamentals of associations and their mappings Delve into advanced concepts such as caching, inheritance, and types Walk through the Hibernate Query Language API, with examples Develop Java Persistence API applications, using Hibernate as the provider Work hands-on with code snippets to understand the technology