Buy it!
A must-have book for any Java developers who wants a advanced level in object-to-relational mapping. Very good.
Going into Hibernation with ORM?
If you have seen the light of ORM and want a good technical read on this subject, this book is not for you. JPA here, Hibernate there, JPA here, Hibernate there. All over the place with nothing on GUID and how Hibernate/JPA handles that. Please split this book into two books next time around covering JPA 2.0 and Hibernate 3/4. And more coverage on Java SE and Java EE environments as well as best practices and design patterns chapters would have been helpful.
JPA with Hibernate or Hibernate with JPA?
This book is obviously a pitch for two of the main technologies in the JBoss Java EE stack: Hibernate and Seam. I was expecting heavier and more in-depth coverage of JPA 1.0 and highlights of forthcoming changes in JPA 2.0 but instead there is a lot of Hibernate config xml coverage and absolutely no mention of Spring. This mammoth tome obviously should have been released as two books, one on JPA and one on Hibernate. You're better off with the previous edition (*much* less confusing than this one) and online docs. Good luck, this is a horrible, painful read. Now how about a long overdue Head First Hibernate?!
Very helpful
This book is not a cookbook, but it does provide a deeper-than-usual perspective on the concepts guiding Hibernate and ORM in general. As a result, you have to read it differently from the run-of-the-mill software book: say a chapter at a time, rather than simply copying the code samples. In my experience, that special effort really pays off. Thanks to the authors!
decent material but poorly written
First off, if you want a great example of a very well written technical book on Java EE, check out Seam in Action. Allen covers ORM as well. This book goes back and forth between the Hibernate xml mappings and the JPA annotations very often. The Hibernate Session API and JPA EntityManager API is thrown around willy nilly in the text. It's very difficult to concentrate and digest the information. But there is some good stuff in there including second level cache and Seam (which seams inappropriate for a ORM book). Also there is way too much detail at times (most of the book honestly) so you don't get the high-level picture of the ORM concepts. What about Kodo and JPOX and other persistence providers for JPA? Not written by a native English speaker apparently so another minus. JPA and Hibernate are obviously related but they belong in separate books for clarity. For JPA, I recommend Java Persistence book by Mike Keith (Apress). Or the spec (JSR 220). This book is not worth the price, find something better. For Hibernate, you can learn a lot from the Caveat Emptor download as well. The authors have yet to finish the Seam version of Caveat Emptor! Get with the program!
(57 reviews)
