Hibernate Quickly (Paperback)

~ Nick Heudecker (Author), (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

A concise introduction to Hibernate's many configuration and design options, this book distills Hibernate into digestible pieces with many code examples, practical usage scenarios, and coverage of the tools available to developers writing Hibernate applications. Developers will learn what Hibernate is, what it can do, and how it can be used effectively. New Hibernate features are covered and the provided code examples evolve incrementally as new concepts are introduced. The examples included execute from Ant and run as JUnit test cases. An understanding of JUnit is not required and running the code as a series of test cases allows for the easily demonstrated functionality without resorting to a complicated Web application. How Hibernate can work with other common development tools and frameworks like XDoclet, Struts, Webwork, Spring, and Tapestry is also discussed as well as writing mapping files and creating associations.

About the Author

Nick Heudecker is the president and founder of System Mobile, a software consulting firm. He lives in Chicago. Patrick Peak is the chief technical officer of BrowserMedia, a Java/J2EE Web development and design firm. He lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Product Details

• Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: Manning Publications; illustrated edition edition (August 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932394419
• ISBN-13: 978-1932394412
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #717,482 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not much quicker than Hibernate in Action, September 22, 2005

By	Anthony (Chicago) - See all my reviews

I've read both this book and Hibernate in Action, the de facto Hibernate bible. Obviously, the main selling point of Hibernate Quickly is that it's supposed to help you get started with Hibernate faster and less painfully than with other resources or texts.

Unfortunately, I think it falls short. Even just looking at the number of pages in the book, Hibernate Quickly is not much briefer than Hibernate in Action. Some of you may argue that the latter might be more dense, and thus harder to digest. But going beyond book length, I actually think Hibernate in Action is an easier read, for a number of reasons.

First, it does a better job of explaining the reasons or motivations for a feature. Some of you might think this just slows things down, but for me (and I'm sure many others), it accelerates reading and learning.

Related to that issue, Hibernate in Action just flows better. They start simply with a basic example, bring up complications or difficulties surrounding that example, then incrementally introduce the next feature or example, which addresses those problems. The segues are intuitive, concise, and very helpful.

One other issue -- with Hibernate Quickly, I often found myself wondering about some detail surrounding an ORM or Hibernate concept, which I'm sure was excluded in the interest of brevity. I found this made it slower for me to get through the book. I know I have a tendency to get distracted with theoretical details. But I think any intellectually curious developer would also be frustrated by this. You know the feeling: wondering if you shouldn't continue reading forward because your understanding is lacking, or having to consciously suppress these questions as temporarily unimportant details.

With Hibernate in Action, this rarely was the case. If there was a related detail that was excluded, the authors were usually explicit about whether this was deferred to later in the text, or if they addressed it in a previous chapter.

It's clear that the same thoughtfulness used in the design of Hibernate itself was applied to the construction of Hibernate in Action.

On the other hand (and I hate to make this criticism), I don't get that impression with this book. Covering a topic briefly or "quickly" actually takes a lot more work on the part of the author than writing a long text -- assuming it's done well. Condensing and distilling the subject matter takes a lot of time, but the result should be time savings for the reader -- that's how the author usually creates value for most non-theoretical technical books.

But netting it all out, I think I would have "Hibernated quicker" if I just went straight to Hibernate in Action.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read the description..., June 14, 2006

By	monkeyden (beantown) - See all my reviews

...for the book before you buy it. This book does exactly what it was intended to do. It "give(s) readers the 20% of information they need 80% of the time". If you're already a somewhat experienced user of Hibernate and learning the first 20% of it is not your goal, then this book is not for you. Sounds like many people are holding this book accountable for the egregious void of in-depth and recent Hibernate3 books and lack of good documentation on it's own site. Don't burn a good book because hibernate.org doesn't even offer a metadata reference. Although I am referring to the book less over time, I a lot of value from it. If you don't know Hibernate, and want to, buy this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Worst Programming Book I've Ever Bought, April 19, 2007

By	Ray Wenderlich (Fairfax, VA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I bought this book because I thought it would help me get a working example of using Hibernate working quickly. However, I found it completely impossible to get even the first example listed in the book working. The source code provided on their web site doesn't work despite many people complaining that it is broken. Even worse, the source code does not match the book text (I suspect the authors were rushing to make their book listings to read as-if it were Hibernate version 3 compatible but didn't bother to update the sample code), so it's impossible to follow along.

After several hours of frustration, I ended up taking the book back to the bookstore and bought Beginning Hibernate by Dave Mitner instead. It helped me get a working example up quickly and contained much more up-to-date information, and was much more clear.

In short, don't waste your time with this book, buy Beginning Hibernate (or anything else really) instead.