What should I learn first, Spring or Hibernate? [closed]

Answer 1

Spring is far bigger and more generally applicable than Hibernate is. You decision is a trade-off between the length of the learning curve and the utility you'll have when you're done.

I'd recommend Spring, because it can either co-exist with both Struts and Hibernate OR supply alternatives for either one (Spring web MVC and Spring JDBC).

Spring will have a beneficial effect on your Java EE designs. Start with that.

Answer 2

I would go with Spring first. Spring has so many different pieces that are useful: dependency injection, aspect-oriented programming, JDBC helper classes, an entire MVC framework and loads more. You can use as little or as much of Spring as you want on your first application and the reference documentation is truly excellent. You can easily learn Spring without buying even a single book on it.

Answer 3

if you need both technologies Spring Live all you need. I've started learning that technologies from completely zero :)

Answer 4

First I learned Hibernate. Used groovy to try out different Hibernate examples. Then learned Spring and its Hibernate support. I think I had a really interesting journey.

Here is an example of Struts+Spring+Hibernate application. Struts for front-end, Spring for middle layer and JPA/Hibernate for persistence layer.

http://struts.apache.org/2.0.11/docs/struts-2-spring-2-jpa-ajax.html

Answer 5

I would consider to learn them both at the same time. Spring and NHibernate are both large frameworks with a high learning curve. It will take you some studying and experimenting time to become familiar with and good at it. When you are busy with both the frameworks, you will automatically focus on the most useful parts of them first. Learning the important parts first will make the learning curve steeper.

Answer 6

I'd suggest learning Spring. Learn just the basics, and then when you do come to learn Hibernate you'll be able to take advantage of all the Spring helpers which make Hibernate easier to use.

There's also the point that Spring is useful in many layers instead of just at the data access part :)