Hibernate Quickly

by Nick Heudecker and Patrick Peak

Hibernate Quickly is a companion volume to Manning's Hibernate in Action which is a focused and comprehensive book on the subject written by the project founders. The current book aims to give readers the 20% of information they need 80% of the time. It uses the pages saved to orient the reader within the Hibernate "ecosystem": the peripheral technologies and techniques typically used with Hibernate. This is the book readers are likely to turn to...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1932394419
• ISBN13: 9781932394412
• Release Date: August 2005
• Publisher: Manning Publications Co. LLC
• Length: 220 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 9.3" x 7.4"

Customer Reviews

Nice quick reference

I think the book does what it says. I was able to finish the basic understanding of Hibernate 3 within 2 days flat. The language is really easy and it provides the crux of crucial concepts within 3-4 chapters. Sometimes I have seen that reference books talk too much on all the concepts and I usually get bored till I come to say 11th chapter where real concepts are used.

Read the description...

...for the book before you buy it. This book does exactly what it was intended to do. It "give(s) readers the 20% of information they need 80% of the time". If you're already a somewhat experienced user of Hibernate and learning the first 20% of it is not your goal, then this book is not for you. Sounds like many people are holding this book accountable for the egregious void of in-depth and recent Hibernate3 books and lack of good documentation on it's own site. Don't burn a good book because hibernate.org doesn't even offer a metadata reference. Although I am referring to the book less over time, I a lot of value from it. If you don't know Hibernate, and want to, buy this book.

Great intro to Hibernate

Hibernate has become the most popular ORM framework for Java. This book is a great way to learn what you need to know to get started. The basic prerequisites for getting the most from the book are knowledge of Java and familiarity with relational databases. In a progressive manner, Hibernate concepts are introduced. The organization of the material in the book is quite good. At the beginning of each chapter, a bullet list of the topics is followed by an overview of the chapter. The chapter goals are listed next. The assumptions made by the authors are also listed. This allows the reader to review a topic if it is required to understand the new material. Good examples (code and xml) accompany the text as well as some graphics to illustrate certain points. The code examples are available on the book web site. Each chapter concludes with a summary section. The book starts with question "Why Hibernate?" and does a good job explaining the problems that Hibernate is designed to solve. Since Ant and MySQL are used in the examples, a chapter is devoted to introducing them and doing the install. The next four chapters cover the basics of Hibernate, how to work with associations, how to manage collections, and how to query objects persisted with Hibernate. One nice touch is that usually a problem is demonstrated with an example so that it is easier to appreciate the solution. Since Hibernate is used in conjunction with other tools and frameworks, the next chapters show how to use Spring to organize the DAO, how to use it with three different presentation frameworks, how to use XDoclet to avoid all that xml, and how to unit test with JUnit and DBUnit. Although throughout the text, the differences between Hibernate 2 and Hibernate 3 are highlighted, the final chapter focuses on what is new in Hibernate 3. While the main focus of the book is on getting developers started with Hibernate, the book could also be useful for developers that may have used some features, but want to enhance their knowledge. I found that the chapters on using Hibernate with Tapestry and Spring very helpful. This book is great way to get started.

Good Book for New Hibernate Users

Hibernate Quickly is a good introductory level book for developers new to Hibernate. It gives you the basic knowledge on how to get started with Hibernate by taking you through a single step-by-step example scenario that is easy to follow. This same example is used in the entire book and expanded to explore advanced features of Hibernate. The book builds on covered grounds with every introduction of a new feature so that the reader is never lost or overwhelmed. Examples and diagrams are used throughout the book to explain Hibernate's features in more than one way. One of the difficult aspects of Hibernate to new users is mapping. This book covers every type of mapping - many-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many, in great detail using UML diagrams and ER diagrams. It also shows table structures that would be used to support the object model. Thus, it clarifies the bridge between the object world and the entity world in multiple ways. By starting with a base that the reader already is familiar with (the relational world), the reader is able to absorb the new concepts of Hibernate easily. Advanced topics such as cascading, lazy-loading, caching, and transaction management are also covered in the same way - gently progressing in complexity so as to not loose the reader. However, the book lacks a good explanation on why someone would use, for example, second level caching or one transaction strategy over the other, thus leaving advanced Hibernate users wanting more practical advice and best practices. Hibernate is most often used with other technologies. In this book, the author covers integration with Spring, WebWork, Struts, Tapestry, XDoclet, JUnit and DBUnit at a very high level. However, it does not cover integration with JBoss, which is merging quite extensively with Hibernate 3.1. A whole chapter is dedicated to new features of Hibernate 3.0, while throughout the book, the differences between version 2 and 3 are pointed out. As the name implies, this book is for developers who want to learn Hibernate quickly. It's easy to read and follow because it gives step-by-step instructions on getting started with the basics of Hibernate with plenty of examples and diagrams. I recommend this book for first time Hibernate users.

20% to Handle 80% of the Jobs

Hibernate is an open source software program that is positioned between an application written using object oriented programming techniques and a SQL based relational database. It has been found useful in enabling the Java programmer to get the most out of the basically procedural oriented SQL. This particular book has a good title that comes from the fact that this book is intended to get the reader up and using Hibernate quickly. It could also be called Hibernate 20%. Like with most languages, about 20% of what Hibernate can do is really used in about 80% of the cases. Hibernate Quickly is basically a tutorial oriented book that starts with the installation of Hibernate and leads you through a series of uses of the software. It begins quite simply to illustrate what the software can do, then incrementally increases the tasks until the 20% level is reached. For more information about Hibernate, i.e. a reference book that covers everything it can do, Hibernate in Action was written by the developers and is excellent. It's not as user friendly in getting started as this one, so both books are recommended.