Persistence-the ability of data to outlive an instance of a program-is central to modern applications. Hibernate, the most popular Java persistence tool, provides automatic and transparent object/relational mapping making it a snap to work with SQL databases in Java applications. Hibernate applications are cheaper, more portable, and more resilient to change. Because it conforms to the new EJB 3.0 and Java Persistence 1.0 standard, Hibernate allows the developer to seamlessly create efficient, scalable Java EE applications. Java Persistence with Hibernate explores Hibernate by developing an application that ties together hundreds of individual examples. You'll immediately dig into the rich programming model of Hibernate 3.2 and Java Persistence, work...