For the most part, the book tries to be database agnostic, so any database specific information is relegated to that database's reference manual.
As far as Spring goes, I very intentionally did not include chapters on Spring in the book.
When I look at the reviews of many of the Hibernate books on Amazon, I see a very common
thread, where people say they were overwhelmed by all of the material a given book produced. I really wanted to avoid that, and stay true to the topic of Hibernate. By going into topics such as Spring or
JSF or Seam, I think it tends to take the focus away from the real core objective of the book, and that is to help people understand Hibernate, and really get a good understanding of how to properly leverage the Hibernate framework in their applications. I also think that this is what the reader wants when they pick up a book like this.
But beyond trying to help focus the reader and help them concentrate on learning the fundamentals of Hibernate, what I do find on my own projects is that when people understand Hibernate, and I mean really understand it, they find the integrating it into Spring or JSF or Seam or GWT is very natural and easy. Configuration and integration problems happen when people don't really understand how Hibernate works, and instead, just use it to get it "to do something they want it to do." If you really understand Hibernate, which is what this book will teach you, integrating with Spring will be much easier, you will encounter fewer problems, and when problems do arise, you'll have the Hibernate skills and
Java knowledge to solve those problems quickly an intelligently.
-Cameron McKenzie