As discussed above,Hibernate provides data storage and retrieval by direct mapping of Object and Relation without letting the application developer worry about the persistence logic. There are few alternatives to Hibernate.

• You may choose to use plain SQL queries to store and retrieve data but that is not an alternate to Hibernate as using plain SQL queries does not provide maximum of the features provided by Hibernate.


• You can use Enterprise Java Beans. In particular,Entity Beans are good alternate to Hibernate. But again,you need to see if you really have the requirements of an EJB container?


• You can use the spring framework (www.springframework.org) to implement a DAO layer which would centralize as well as minimize any future need to change persistence implementations.


• There are many other Object/Relation mapping products available like OJB (ObJectRelationalBridge),Torque,Castor,Cayenne,TJDO etc. For more details see http://java-source.net/open-source/persistence