Professional Hibernate (Programmer to Programmer) [Paperback]

Eric Pugh (Author), Joseph D. Gradecki (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 8, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0764576771 | ISBN-13: 978-0764576775 | Edition: 1

What is this book about?

This book is written for professional Java developers who already understand how to build server-side Java applications.  The book assumes no previous experience with Hibernate, though readers should have a general familiarity with databases and Web development.

What does this book cover?

After a quick overview of Hibernate in the first two chapters, the authors jump right to the code.  They show how to do the following:

• Obtain and install Hibernate
• Build the Hibernate development environment
• Use Hibernate to connect to databases
• Use Hibernate to create persistent classes and objects
• Use the Hibernate database query language and transaction management functions
• Use the Hibernate APIs

After covering these essentials, the authors go further, showing readers how to use Hibernate in the real world.  This means demonstrating how to use Hibernate with other popular tools that readers are using (including Eclipse, Tomcat, Maven, Struts, and XDoclet). This book takes a very real-world, hands-on approach to these topics and includes many working code examples, as well as a sophisticated sample application.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Hibernate is an object/relational mapping (ORM) tool that also provides data querying and retrieval functions in a Java environment. Whether you are using simple objects or collections, Hibernate reduces your development time by handling most of the common data persistence tasks. This code-intensive text will take you through Hibernate’s major components and show you exactly how to use it to enhance your current development practices and toolsets.

You will learn how to install Hibernate, build the development environment, and configure Hibernate for a variety of databases, including DB2®, HypersonicSQL, MySQL®, Oracle®, and PostgreSQL. Then you’ll learn the details of connecting to databases using Hibernate, creating persistent classes and objects, working with SQL and HQL (the Hibernate Query Language), and managing transactions. Finally, you will take that basic knowledge into your real-world applications, learning to use Hibernate with other tools such as Eclipse, Tomcat, Maven, Struts, and Xdoclet.

What you will learn from this book

• How Hibernate maps objects to a relational database
• How to build a development environment for using Hibernate in a standalone context or in coordination with Tomcat
• Methods of creating persistent objects
• Query techniques using both traditional SQL and Hibernate Query Language
• The DAO design pattern and how to use DAO with Hibernate
• The application of Hibernate within a Maven project management system
• How to incorporate Aspect J and Hibernate for complete control
• How to use advanced caching techniques to improve Hibernate’s performance
• How to use XDoclet with Hibernate to reduce your development time
• The procedure for using Velocity and Struts with Hibernate

Who this book is for

This book is for professional Java developers who already know how to build sophisticated applications and have at least a general familiarity with databases, Java application development, and Web development. No prior experience with Hibernate is required.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

About the Author

Eric Pugh is a member of the Maven development team and an experienced Java enterprise developer specializing in database application design and development, and open source tool integration. He has contributed Hibernate-related code to many projects, including XDoclet and OSWorkflow, and is currently leading development of the Hibernate plugin for Maven. Eric has built several Hibernate applications for clients (including a Web-based lab automation application) and regularly uses Hibernate with Eclipse and Maven. In addition to writing documentation and specifications, Eric has written for OnJava.

Joseph D. Gradecki is a software engineer at Comprehensive Software Solutions, where he works on their SABIL product, an enterprise-level securities processing system. He has built numerous dynamic, enterprise application using Java, Hibernate, MySQL, XML, AspectJ, servlets, JSPs, Resin, BroadVision, and other technologies. He is the author of Mastering JXTA and the co-author of MySQL and Java Developers Guide and Professional Java Tools for Extreme Programming. Joe holds Bachelors and Masters degrees in Computer Science and is currently pursuing a Ph.D.

Product Details

• Paperback: 456 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; 1 edition (October 8, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764576771
• ISBN-13: 978-0764576775
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,682,621 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Fascinated by the "craft" of software development, Eric Pugh has been heavily involved in the open source world as a developer, committer, and user for the past 5 years. He is an emeritus member of the Apache Software Foundation and lately has been mulling over how we move from the read/write web to the read/write/share web.

In biotech, financial services and defense IT, he has helped European and American companies develop coherent strategies for embracing open source software, with a focus on Solr. As a speaker he has advocated the advantages of Agile practices in software development.

Eric became involved in Solr when he submitted the patch SOLR-284 for Parsing Rich Document types such as PDF and MS Office formats that became the single most popular patch as measured by votes! The patch was subsequently cleaned up and enhanced by three other individuals, demonstrating the power of the Free/Open Source Model to build great code collaboratively. SOLR-284 was eventually refactored into Solr Cell as part of Solr version 1.4.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Unprofessional Hibernate, January 28, 2005

By 

Daniel Kirkdorffer (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Professional Hibernate (Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

I'd actually give this book 0 stars if I could.

I have never purchased such a bad technical book in 16 years of spending my money on these things. This book is full of coding errors, explanation errors, and typographical errors. The authors fail to point out very important information needed to get their examples working. The downloadable examples are organized in folders for the wrong chapters. The examples don't work when applied to configurations described in the text. The litany of problems goes on and on.

The fact the book mentions no technical reviewers should have tipped me off.

The supporting Web page at Wrox has no errata entries, even though the book has hundreds of mistakes. The forum on the book is dead. If you want to post errata you have to register, and then when you do it rejects your login. Perhaps that accounts for no errata.

I'd say the authors have no interest in maintaining such a list themselves, or else have moved on to other hobbies. As a Java developer I'd strongly recommend anyone contemplating this book moves on and buys another book instead. I'd recommend the book by Will Iverson ("Hibernate : A J2EE Developer's Guide") or "Hibernate in Action" by Christian Bauer, Gavin King instead.

The only positive thing I could say for the book is that it will force you do a lot of hunting down of answers to help you get through all the problems that working through their examples will give you. Having to fix a problem is often the best way to understand the details of a tool, API, or issue. But as a way of learning a technology I'd not recommend it. Most developers have enough of such frustrations in their day to day job to deal with already.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible ! Do the authors know JAVA ?, December 13, 2004

By 

Sathyanarayanan Sekar "a book worm" (Bangalore, India) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Professional Hibernate (Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

I fully agree with the other reviewers. Unfortunately, I bought the book before I checked the comments out here.

This is a book which does appear to be good - lots of code examples and all that. But it all comes to naught when the code is fraught with errors. And such terrible errors that I wonder whether the authors know Java at all.

Here is a code snippet they have used to illustarte binary data being saved in Hibernate:

public class Someclass {

....

Blob blob;

...

public void setBlob(bytes[] b) {

this.blob = b;

}

...

}

Now I ask you - is this code ever going to compile ? If binary data setting was so easy, we wouldnt have so many web-sites dealing with how to save Blobs into the database.

There are typos and code errors galore. My advice - stay away from this book !

I hear "Hibernate in Action" is much better and it has been well reviewed by folks at theserverside.com. So I should think that that should be a better option.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Laughably bad, May 10, 2005

By 

Patrick Carroll "Winebibber. Java/JEE Develo... (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Professional Hibernate (Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

Full of typos (they could at least have done a search-and-replace of "Hibemate"). Lots of filler (viz. the chapters on things like the DAO pattern).

Definitely not worth it.

The Manning book remains the standard for in-depth coverage, while the O'Reilly programmer's notebook does the trick for the quick-and-dirty introduction. Skip the rest.