With JPA (Java Persistence API) gaining more and more traction, a good book on how to best use the Hibernate implementation has been sorely needed - fortunately, Java Persistence with Hibernate is that book. Pro EJB 3: Java Persistence API is a great general JPA reference, and has indeed come in handy for many questions I’ve run into. However, Java Persistence with Hibernate really shines in helping those of us who have used Hibernate in the past achieve some of the same things with Hibernate’s JPA implementation as we did with plain old Hibernate.

The biggest help this book has been so far has been in helping us diagnose and deal with weird problems (or at the very least, unexpected behavior) in Hibernate’s JPA implementation. Some of the issues we’ve run into with n+1 select problems, bag issues, and other collection-related problems have been resolved with the help of this book.

Aside from helping with problems you run into, it has some very good chapters on caching, transactions, optimization, and dealing with legacy data. Gavin and Christian wrote the original Hibernate and are still active in it, and Gavin is on the EJB3 committee, so the information they have to share is quite good.

The format of the book is quite helpful for those with Hibernate experience especially - it starts off showing how to do something in Hibernate using the old way - xml files. Then it shows how you’d accomplish the same thing using annotations. The authors let you know when doing something a certain way will tie you to Hibernate - something you’ll run into very quickly on most projects, given that JPA contains rather unfortunately a subset of features of Hibernate.

The only negative thing is the service from Manning - the publisher. I’ve participated in their early access program a few times, and have yet to receive a book on time as part of it. I currently do not have a hard copy of the book for this reason, and it is kind of frustrating to not get a book and have it take a long time to get resolved. I’ve yet to be disappointed by the books themselves, but their shipping and customer service leave much to be desired. I still recommend the book, just pick it up from Amazon or B&N or your local bookstore - not from Manning themselves.

As of this review, it is $37.79 at Amazon.com.