Starting in with Hibernate

At long last, I'm getting a chance to really dig into Hibernate. I took a cursory look at it about a year ago, but realized I didn't have enough time to design and build a new application (for the end of the Tapestry book) and stay on schedule. Now that I've promised Jay Zimmerman a session on using Tapestry and Hibernate, I need to actually learn the technology.

So far, I'm liking what I'm seeing. I'm also, in the back of my mind, thinking in terms of Hibernate/HiveMind integration (Hivernate?). I could peek at what the Spring folks have done, but that would be cheating. Likewise, I'm not looking at what others have done in terms of Tapestry / Hibernate integration either, at least until I take my first pass at it.

It's clear that Gavin and team have hit the same issues and requirements I've encountered over the last 10 (!) years. It's kind of fun ... I'm seeing the echos of their design decisions over the last few years, the rough edges they've smoothed out by extending their DTDs and APIs. Someone on the outside of Tapestry looking in would see the same thing.