前言

Working with both Object-Oriented software and Relational Databases can be cumbersome and time consuming. Development costs are significantly higher due to a paradigm mismatch between how data is represented in objects versus relational databases. Hibernate is an Object/Relational Mapping solution for Java environments. The term Object/Relational Mapping refers to the technique of mapping data from an object model representation to a relational data model representation (and visa versa). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-relational_mapping for a good high-level discussion.

注意

While having a strong background in SQL is not required to use Hibernate, having a basic understanding of the concepts can greatly help you understand Hibernate more fully and quickly. Probably the single best background is an understanding of data modeling principles. You might want to consider these resources as a good starting point:

Hibernate not only takes care of the mapping from Java classes to database tables (and from Java data types to SQL data types), but also provides data query and retrieval facilities. It can significantly reduce development time otherwise spent with manual data handling in SQL and JDBC. Hibernate’s design goal is to relieve the developer from 95% of common data persistence-related programming tasks by eliminating the need for manual, hand-crafted data processing using SQL and JDBC. However, unlike many other persistence solutions, Hibernate does not hide the power of SQL from you and guarantees that your investment in relational technology and knowledge is as valid as always.

Hibernate may not be the best solution for data-centric applications that only use stored-procedures to implement the business logic in the database, it is most useful with object-oriented domain models and business logic in the Java-based middle-tier. However, Hibernate can certainly help you to remove or encapsulate vendor-specific SQL code and will help with the common task of result set translation from a tabular representation to a graph of objects.

如果你对 Hibernate 和对象/关系型数据库映射还是个新手，甚至对 Java 也不熟悉，请按照下面的步骤来学习。

Read 第 1 章教程 for a tutorial with step-by-step instructions. The source code for the tutorial is included in the distribution in the doc/reference/tutorial/ directory.
Read 第 2 章 体系结构（Architecture） to understand the environments where Hibernate can be used.
查看 Hibernate 发行包中的 eg/ 目录，里面有个一简单的独立运行的程序。把你的 JDBC 驱动复制到 lib/ 目录并修改一下 etc/hibernate.properties，指定数据库的信息。然后进入命令行，切换到发行包的目录，输入 ant eg（使用 Ant），或者在 Windows 系统下使用 build eg。
Use this reference documentation as your primary source of information. Consider reading [JPwH] if you need more help with application design, or if you prefer a step-by-step tutorial. Also visit http://caveatemptor.hibernate.org and download the example application from [JPwH].
在 Hibernate 网站上可以找到问题和解答（FAQ）。
在 Hibernate 网站上还有第三方的演示、示例和教程的链接。
Hibernate 网站的社区是讨论关于设计模式以及很多整合方案（Tomcat、JBoss AS、Struts、EJB 等）的好地方。

There are a number of ways to become involved in the Hibernate community, including

Trying stuff out and reporting bugs. See http://hibernate.org/issuetracker.html details.
Trying your hand at fixing some bugs or implementing enhancements. Again, see http://hibernate.org/issuetracker.html details.
http://hibernate.org/community.html list a few ways to engage in the community.
- There are forums for users to ask questions and receive help from the community.
- There are also IRC channels for both user and developer discussions.
Helping improve or translate this documentation. Contact us on the developer mailing list if you have interest.
Evangelizing Hibernate within your organization.