What version of Hibernate does the book cover?
Hibernate 3.2.6 is the core version the book covers, although there really isn't anything in the book that doesn't equally apply to 3.2.5 or for the most part, earlier versions.
Do you compare Hibernate data access with a normal JDBC access and bring out the advantages thereby in using hibernate than plain old JDBC?
Do you also talk about the Annotations in Hibernate?
The book is actually called "Hibernate Made Easy: Simplified Data Persistence with Hibernate and JPA Annotations," so, as that would imply, yes, the book focuses on using annotations.
My goal in writing this Hibernate book was to really focus on what the Hibernate book market needs. If you read the reviews on most of the popular Hibernate books out there, some of the common complaints are that the books try to cover too much, and that makes learning Hibernate difficult. Personally, I encountered the very same issue when I tried to learn Hibernate, despite the fact that I have a strong background in JDBC and EJBs.
So, I wanted this book to be very focussed, allowing people to pick it up, read through it, and learn Hibernate quickly and efficiently. As such, I focussed on JPA annotations, and didn't try to explain mapping files at the same time. Furthermore, I very intentionally stayed away from adding tutorials on how to use Spring or how to use
JSF. I also didn't talk about other frameworks or direct JDBC. My thoughts are that anyone reading a book called Hibernate Made Easy needs to learn Hibernate, and doing sidebar discussion on JDBC or Toplink or Portlets would take away from the overall objective, and make learning more difficult, which would fly directly in the face of making Hibernate Easy.
The big thing about my Hibernate Book is that it really teaches people how Hibernate works, not just 'how to get Hibernate to do something.' As such, with that solid grounding in Hibernate technology, people gain the ability to make their own comparisons with other frameworks or strategies such as JDBC, and as such can make their own informed decisions about the various benefits and drawbacks.
Kindest regards,
-Cameron McKenzie