Java EE 5 provides all the features you need to build a robust enterprise application right in an EJB 3.0 container, but incorporating the relative strengths of Spring and Hibernate can further improve the productivity and quality of your application.

As great as Hibernate is, a lesser-known Java persistence solution called iBATIS actually may be a superior technology for your Spring development in certain situations. Find out which.

If you're using Hibernate, your business objects may be littered with unnecessary code. Learn a different, proven approach that challenges conventional wisdom and promises more streamlined integration with less code.

Newer Hibernate developers sometimes don't understand Hibernate caching and use it poorly as a result. However, when used correctly, it can be one of the most powerful ways to accelerate Hibernate applications.

The Hibernate Criteria API, a powerful and flexible alternative to traditional HQL queries, makes writing all those tricky multi-criteria search functions—as well as dynamic queries in general—much easier.

You've decided to switch from EJB to Hibernate for persistence in your J2EE applications, but you don't know what to do with your existing EJB tier. Learn how a few decisions upfront, some simple ground rules, and design patterns can smooth the transition.

Thanks to the XML persistence features in the recently released Hibernate 3, Java developers now have a framework that provides an efficient and consistent method for effortless OR and XML persistence.

The 'impedance mismatch' between relational databases' tabular orientation and object-oriented Java's hierarchical one is a perennial problem for which the Java world has several good solution offerings. The second in a three-part series, this article examines the ways that the Hibernate framework attempts to simplify the chore of connecting relational databases and the Java programming language.