Hibernate in Action

by Gavin King and Christian Bauer

Hibernate practically exploded on the Java scene. Why is this open-source tool so popular? Because it automates a tedious task: persisting your Java objects to a relational database. The inevitable mismatch between your object-oriented code and the relational database requires you to write code that maps one to the other. This code is often complex, tedious and costly to develop. Hibernate does the mapping for you.
Not only that, Hibernate makes...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 193239415X
• ISBN13: 9781932394153
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Manning Publications
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

The Authoritative Guide

This is the the authoritative user's guide to Hibernate. There is no easier way to attain a level of competency in the use of Hibernate sufficient for most real-world projects. For those who are less experienced in Java programming, I recommend first buying the introduction to Hibernate from the Developer's Notebook series. This was my first Hibernate book, and it had me up and running with a very simple demonstration of how Hibernate works in about ten minutes. But this book won't give you the depth of knowledge you need to do anything more than a very simple project. After you're up and running with the basics, move on to Hibernate In Action. For those who have somehow attained proficiency in the most commonly-used features of Hibernate without reading Hibernate In Action, you might not need it any more. It hits the sweet spot of containing everything that most developers will need for most projects without burying the reader in arcana. However, its coverage of more advanced features such as Interceptors is rather limited. By the time you have reached an intermediate level of expertise in Hibernate, you'll probably be able to make do with the Javadoc and online documentation to get a handle on the advanced stuff.

Masterful, but not In Action

Just about everything I could say about this book has been already said. This is truely a great book. It is mainly aimed at a developer audience with a fair degree of Hibernate experience. I would not recommend this book to a fledgling. The style is not to present a flowing tutorial, with full code examples explained; instead, this is a topical, how-to book, with code snippets. It is a much more readable form of the Hibernate 2.1 reference guide, providing some glue between the topics. Having said the above, just be aware that this is not a typical Manning "In Action" book. Even though there is a full, downloadable code example, the book does not walk you through it - except where the code is used to highlight a discussed topic. The authors are currently writing an update to this book, which the publisher indicated to me would be out perhaps by September or October. If you cannot wait until then, Hibernate Quickly, published by Manning, should be out in the next couple of weeks. Also, Pro Hibernate will be published in July.

The definitive tome on Hibernate

Data persistence is quite naturally at the heart of most enterprise applications. There are a myriad of choices the Java developer faces in choosing a persistence mechanism. JDBC and EJBs have long been the standard options, along with relative newcomer JDO, and various commercial Object/Relational Mapping (ORM) solutions. All of these have their place, but they also come with some baggage as well. Enter Hibernate, a popular open-source solution for ORM designed to meet some of the perceived shortcomings of the more traditional Java persistence mechanisms. Manning's "Hibernate In Action", written by two members of the core Hibernate team (including the project's founder), takes the reader step-by-step through the process of getting up and running with Hibernate. The book begins with an introduction to issues involved in object / relational persistence. Naturally, Hibernate addresses each concern raised with this topic. Right from the beginning I couldn't help but get the feeling that the authors were trying to sell me something. The rest of the book however proceeds in typical Manning "In Action" style by diving into the nuts and bolts of what it takes to get up and running using Hibernate. An example application, an online auction application, is used throughout the book to illustrate the implementation of a Hibernate solution. The examples are clear and easy to follow, and serve adequately to prepare the reader to implement Hibernate in their own applications. "Hibernate In Action" has to be considered the definitive tome on Hibernate. As the authors are intimately involved with the project, the insight on Hibernate that they provide can't be easily duplicated. That said, the authors' own, often controversial, opinions on common design practices (DTOs for example) are sprinkled liberally throughout the text, and this may turn off some readers. Still, if your project is going to be using hibernate or is considering using Hibernate, this book is a must-have.

Better Than The On-Line Docs

This is another one of those books that shouldn't be torn into until you have some idea of what you are looking for. Hibernate, the software system that is the heart of the book is (in my mind at least) the glue that goes between Java and a SQL database. You should have some experience with both Java and SQL to begin to understand the power that Hibernate brings to the table. Once you have that down, then this book becomes well worth the cost. It's true that Open Source projects, such as Hibernate, have on-line documentation. But that documentation is written differently than a book. It is aimed at a different audience, and often doesn't have the consistent front to back approach that a well thought out book has. This book is an excellent example. While the on-line documentation is good, (Mr. Bauer, one of the authors is in charge of the on-line documentation) the book is better. It begins with a description of what you are trying to do (often left out in computer books) and leads you on in a consistent manner through the entire Hibernate system. Excellent Book!

The right way of developing and tuning a Hibernate-based app

From a documentation point of view, Hibernate is one of the most notable exception in the world of open-source LGPL'ed projects. Its website offers a plethora of information, from solid documentation (the reference has no less than 141 pages) and various FAQs to sample projects and third-party resources. The forum is quite active and you may get answers to tricky questions. Or a little bit of rough treatment in case you haven't RTFM - but that is understandable, given the number of questions that the authors have to answer every day. Under these circumstances, one might wonder what Gavin King (Hibernate founder) and Christian Bauer (documentation/website maintainer and Hibernate core developer) can add in order to be able to write a 400-pages book about Hibernate. I mean - sure - only by joining the reference documentation, different FAQs and guides, one can easily 'extract' a hefty 'manuscript' with more than 200 pages. Well, I am extremely glad to tell you that this is not the case. The book not only gets you up to speed with Hibernate and its features (which the documentation does quite well). It also introduces you to the right way of developing and tuning an industrial-quality Hibernate application. I consider myself a pretty seasoned Hibernate developer, being familiar with the API since its 1.2 version in Q1-2002 (if I remember well the first app when we used Hibernate). However, I was proved wrong by "Hibernate in action" which describes best practices and even API features that were unknown or vaguely known to me. That is, until now. The first chapter, in the good tradition of all first chapters in the world, is an introduction. It's a very well written introduction about why do we need ORM solutions in OO applications. The chapter explains the O/R impedance mismatch, while declaring quickly that OODB suck (immature and not widely adopted). Wel'll also find out that EJB also suck from a persistence point of view (for various reasons). Which can be quite a surprise knowing that Gavin is one of the authors of EJB3.0 specs. Or, on the contrary, this will explain a lot of things in the new EJB specs. Now that we have cleared the "why Hibernate" issue, let's continue to the second chapter. Which - tradition obliged - is a "Hello, world" and a "Let's get started" chapter. Here you go, almost 50 pages later you should be able to write simple Hibernate-based persistence layers and integrate within an application server, like for instance ... Jboss ! Humm, well, why not ? They are sponsors of the Hibernate project, after all. In the 3rd chapter, our fresh knowledge will be put to good use by starting the development of an online auction application called CaveatEmptor. This app will follow our reading progression and will grow bigger and smarter chapter by chapter. But for the moment, we are at the inception phase. What gives : a little bit of analysis, a stylish class diagram of the domain model and the resulting mapping file. And if you t