Learn Hibernate Quickly: Simplified Java Persistence with Hibernate & JPA

The Easiest Way To Learn Hibernate: YouTube Videos and the Online Tutorials 

I'm a big fan of Hibernate and JPA, and I've worked pretty hard to try and make the technology as accessible and as easy to understand as I possibly can.

One of the biggest problems I find people have with Hibernate and JDBC in general is just getting started. Hibernate and JPA are pretty mind-friendly topics, but if you can't get a simple connection to your database working, well, it can get pretty frustrating. To try and help alleviate that problem, I've put together a few video tutorials that show you how to get started with Hibernate, and how you can install all of the things you need in order to run something more substantial than a "Hello World" application.

The video tutorial goes hand in hand with this webpage tutorial, so it's easy to follow along:

Getting Started with Hibernate and JPA Annotations

Now, I've got to stress: this is a very basic, from the grounds up, tutorial. It starts out with a basic Windows XP installation, and not much else.

The first video tutorial takes you through these mind numbing steps:

Downloading the JDK
Installing the JDK
Downloading MySQL
Installing MySQL
Downloading MySQL Tools
Downloading MySQL JDBC Drivers
Installing/Unzipping Drivers and MySQL Tools

Yeah, I know, who needs to watch a video that does all that? It's good for beginners, and the nice thing about the video is that no step is missed. So, if someone is having a problem, they can check to ensure they've followed all of the right steps.

The second video tutorial gets more to the heart of the matter. It follows the content on this webpage tutorial, and shows you how to annotate a JavaBean/POJO, and then use Hibernate to connect to the database and create the underlying tables. Again, it's a simple example, but the key is the fact that if you can get this to work, then your database and Hibernate environment is working, and once that happens, learning everything else simply becomes fun and easy, as you focus on learning the technology, and not fighting with the environment.

By the way, we've also added in some tutorials on Hibernate 3.5, which is compliant with JPA 2.0, along with some very easy to follow tutorials on using Hibernate as a JPA 2.0 provider, rather than using the Hibernate API and Hibernate Session object directly:

Hibernate 3.5 Tutorial Part I: Getting Started with Hibernate & JPA 2.0
Hibernate 3.5 Tutorial Part II: CRUD Operations with Hibernate & JPA 2.0

If you know someone who's struggling to learn Hibernate and JDBC, send them along to both the site and the tutorials. Many a Java professional has found them handy.

Video Tutorials on Learning Hibernate
Hibernate Made Easy WebSite
Recommended Books for Learning Hibernate
My Similarly Coloured Book on The Simpsons
Check out this updated Tutorials for Spring 3 as well.