What's the difference between JPA and Hibernate? [closed]

Answer 1

Java - its independence is not only from the operating system, but also from the vendor.

Therefore, you should be able to deploy your application on different application servers. JPA is implemented in any Java EE- compliant application server and it allows to swap application servers, but then the implementation is also changing. A Hibernate application may be easier to deploy on a different application server.

Answer 2

JPA is the interface, Hibernate is one implementation of that interface.

Answer 3

JPA is a specification that you implement in your data layer to perform db opertations, OR mappings and other required tasks.

Since it is just a specification, you need a tool to have it implemented. That tool can be either Hibernate, TopLink, iBatis, spring-data etc.

You don't necessarily require JPA if you are using Hibernate in your Data Layer. But if you use JPA specification for Hibernate, then it will make switching to other ORM tools like iBatis, TopLink easy in future, because the specification is common for others as well.

*(if you remember, you do import javax.persistence.*; when you use annotations for OR mapping (like @Id, @Column, @GeneratedValue etc.) in Hibernate, that's where you are using JPA under Hibernate, you can use JPA's @Query & other features as well)

Answer 4

JPA is an API, one which Hibernate implements.Hibernate predates JPA. Before JPA, you write native hibernate code to do your ORM. JPA is just the interface, so now you write JPA code and you need to find an implementation. Hibernate happens to be an implementation.

So your choices are this: hibernate, toplink, etc...

The advantage to JPA is that it allows you to swap out your implementation if need be. The disadvantage is that the native hibernate/toplink/etc... API may offer functionality that the JPA specification doesn't support.

Answer 5

Figuratively speaking JPA is just interface, Hibernate/TopLink - class (i.e. interface implementation).

You must have interface implementation to use interface. But you can use class through interface, i.e. Use Hibernate through JPA API or you can use implementation directly, i.e. use Hibernate directly, not through pure JPA API.

Good book about JPA is "High-Performance Java Persistence" of Vlad Mihalcea.

Answer 6

JPA is JSR i.e. Java Specification Requirement to implement Object Relational Mapping which has got no specific code for its implementation. It defines certain set of rules for for accessing, persisting and managing the data between Java objects and the relational databaseWith its introduction, EJB was replaced as It was criticized for being heavyweight by the Java developer community. Hibernate is one of the way JPA can be implemented using te guidelines.Hibernate is a high-performance Object/Relational persistence and query service which is licensed under the open source GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) .The benefit of this is that you can swap out Hibernate's implementation of JPA for another implementation of the JPA specification. When you use straight Hibernate you are locking into the implementation because other ORMs may use different methods/configurations and annotations, therefore you cannot just switch over to another ORM.