SivaLabs

In Java world, JPA/Hibernate is the most popular and widely used framework. When it comes to overall performance of a software system database persistence layer plays the crucial role. The tricky part with JPA/Hibernate is it is very easy to get started but very very hard to master. This is where Vlad Mihalcea‘s High-Performance Java Persistence book helps you a lot.

The High-Performance Java Persistence book is not just another Hibernate book saying you put this annotation here and call that method there and you are done.

Vlad went all the way to explain how things work in databases and JDBC such as database connection management, response time and throughput, batch updates, caching, transaction management etc in a very detailed way.

For many of us it is a bit overwhelming to understand it in one go, so I read it multiple times and every time I read it I gain more and more insights about how things work under-the-hood.

Vlad Mihalcea is a master of Hibernate and we all know it. He covered almost everything about JPA/Hibernate that you can imagine..in a very detailed way…with lot of code examples. Be it JPA mappings, Identifier generation strategies, relationship configurations, batch operations, fetching/projections, lazy loading, Caching etc etc you are covered.

Just because we are using ORM in our application we should not use ORM for all database operations. For some of things like reporting or very complex queries it is better to go with plain JDBC or use some SQL-focused libraries like JOOQ or MyBatis. In this book JOOQ is covered with sufficient details on how to perform complex queries, work with stored procedures etc.

To put it in one sentence:

High-Performance Java Persistence book is one single book you need to know everything about Java Persistence Layer.