Hibernate Advantages

In this Hibernate tutorial page, we will see about the advantage of using the Hibernate as the Object Relational Mapping (ORM) layer in a Java application. We will start with the advantages of ORM and then move to the Hibernate advantages.

Advantages of Object Relational Mapping

As mentioned earlier, Object Relational Mapping is solution mainly used for mapping the Object Domain Model into relational persistence store. Let’s look at the main advantages that we will get out of an ORM implementation.

• More Productive: If you’ve implemented an application using JDBC, you’re most probably spending a lot of time developing, tuning and maintaining your code relevant to JDBC. ORM usage will help decrease the time required for implementation of an application exponentially by eliminating the need to delve into coding Object/Relational mapping mechanism. Database is the key part of any application and let it be handled by a ready, robust and trusted ORM engine.
• Well designed: ORM is a an effective architectural design pattern, it is implemented and well tested over a period. We need not spend our time to redo something that is already done, tested and being used for many years.

Advantages of Hibernate

Hibernate is an ORM implementation like many other implementations, it has a numerous number of pros and cons. This section is mainly intended for listing down the most advantages of using Hibernate beside for all these advantages listed for ORM.

• Database Independent: Hibernate is independent of the database engine at the backend. List of Hibernate Dialect are provided for connecting whatever database we prefer.
• JPA Provider: Java Persistence API (JPA) is a specification. A lot of implementations are available for JPA; Like EclipseLink, OpenJPA and much more. Hibernate is a standard ORM solution and it has a JPA capability. Hence, using of hibernate would help you leverage the all capabilities of ORM and a JPA in a JPA-specific projects.
• Built-In Connection Pool Implementation: Hibernate has integrated automatically with the most reliable connection pool implementation (C3P0).
• Layered Architecture: Hibernate is a layered architecture, so that we don’t be obligated to use everything provided by Hibernate. We just use those features that you may think they’re lightly enough for the project.