Hibernate Overview

This article is an overview of the Hibernate ORM framework. You will learn about the advantages of Hibernate. Here you will also learn about the databases supported by Hibernate framework.

Hibernate Overview

Hibernate Overview - Learn the basics of Hibernate Framework

This article gives you an overview of Hibernate framework. After reading this article you will be able to understand the Hibernate framework.

Hibernate is one of the most popular ORM tool in Java Programming Language for quickly writing the data access layer for applications. The Hibernate framework was created by Gavin King in the year 2001. Since then Hibernate evolved into enterprise grade Object Relational Mapping tool. Hibernate is high performance, highly scalable, transactional, enterprise grade ORM tool which is being used by developers to develop enterprise applications.

Hibernate increases the productivity of the developers as it generates the persistence related queries on fly. Hibernate framework saves around 95% of envelopers effort in writing the data access layer. It also performs the primary level caching. It can also support secondary- level caching with the help of third party caching framework.

Hibernate is ORM tool

The Hibernate framework is an ORM tool for Java. It is very popular among the developers for creating world class enterprise web and JSE based applications. Hibernate mediates between Java objects and database store. It takes the Java objects from the program and then persists in the database. It takes the instruction from the Java program and translates into a SQL, executes the statements and then returns the result in the Java objects to the Java progam.

Following diagram shows how Hibernate works:

Advantages of Hibernate

There are many advantages of using any ORM tool such as Hibernate. First of all it makes programming much cleaner and reduces the development time upto 95%.  Here are the advantages of Hibernate framework:

  • Hibernate saves lots of development time
  • POJO class can be directly mapped to the database table.
  • Hibernate automatically generates SQL statement on fly
  • Hibernate provides API for saving and queries the data using OOPs principal
  • Hibernate works for both JSE and JEE applications
  • Hibernate supports database associations
  • Caching support high performance
  • Database independent

Hibernate Supported database

Hibernate supports many different databases with the help of dialect's. Here is the list of databases supported by Hibernate Framework:

  • DB2
  • DB2 AS/400
  • DB2 OS390
  • PostgreSQL
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2000
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2005
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2008
  • SAP DB
  • Informix
  • HypersonicSQL
  • H2 Database
  • Ingres
  • Progress
  • Mckoi SQL
  • Interbase
  • Pointbase
  • FrontBase
  • Firebird
  • Sybase
  • Sybase Anywhere

Check the Hibernate 4 tutorials and master Hibernate 4 framework.

Tutorials

  1. Hibernate 4.2 Tutorial
  2. Hibernate Overview
  3. Hibernate Architecture
  4. Setup Hibernate Environment
  5. Hibernate Configuration files
  6. Hibernate Example Step by Step in Eclipse
  7. Hibernate save Example - Rose India Hibernate 4 tutorials
  8. Hibernate Load Example
  9. Hibernate save or update method example
  10. Hibernate Session.delete() Example
  11. Hibernate beginner tutorial
  12. Hibernate Criteria
  13. Hibernate Criteria load all objects from table
  14. Hibernate Criteria average example