JPA vs Hibernate

Hibernate · lesson 2 of 32 · 2 min read

Know which annotations come from the spec and which ones are Hibernate-only extras.

Open this lesson in the learning hub

Key points

  • Jakarta Persistence (JPA) is the specification: interfaces and annotations in jakarta.persistence. It runs nothing by itself.
  • Hibernate ORM is the implementation that does the work. Spring Boot ships it as the default JPA provider.
  • Since Spring Boot 3 and Hibernate 6 the package is jakarta.persistence, not javax.persistence. Older tutorials will not compile.
  • Stay on JPA types (EntityManager, @Entity) for portable code. Drop to Hibernate types (Session, @BatchSize) when the spec has no answer.
  • Spring Data JPA sits one layer higher again: it writes the repository implementation for you, still on top of Hibernate.

JPA is the contract, Hibernate is the engine, Spring Data JPA is the convenience layer.

Why ORM exists Entities and primary keys

This is a reading copy. The full lesson — with the visual explainer, the interactive lab and a Run button for the code — lives in the Hibernate course, and every lesson in it is listed on the Hibernate contents page.