This book packs in information about the release of the Hibernate 3.5 persistence layer and provides a clear introduction to the current standard for object-relational persistence in Java. And since the book keeps its focus on Hibernate without wasting time on nonessential third-party tools, you'll be able to immediately start building transaction-based engines and applications.

Experienced authors Dave Minter and Jeff Linwood provide more in-depth examples than any other book for Hibernate beginners. The authors also present material in a lively, example-based manner-not a dry, theoretical, hard-to-read fashion.