Oh, primary key generation strategies is one of my favorite topics! Here's a moderately brief explanation from my
tutorial on primary key generation strategies tutorial for Hibernate and JPA.
javax.persistence.GenerationType.AUTO
The AUTO generation strategy is the default, and this setting simply chooses the primary key generation strategy that is the default for the database in question, which quite typically is IDENTITY, although it might be TABLE or SEQUENCE depending upon how the database is configured. The AUTO strategy is typically recommended, as it makes your code and your applications most portable.
javax.persistence.GenerationType.IDENTITY
The IDENTITY option simply allows the database to generate a unique primary key for your application. No sequence or table is used to maintain the primary key information, but instead, the database will just pick an appropriate, unique number for Hibernate to assign to the primary key of the entity. With MySQL, the first lowest numbered primary key available in the table in question is chosen, although this behavior may differ from database to database.
javax.persistence.GenerationType.Sequence
Some database vendors support the use of a database sequence object for maintaining primary keys. To use a sequence, you set the GenerationType strategy to SEQUENCE, specify the name of the generator annotation, and then provide the @SequenceGenerator annotation that has attributes for defining both the name of the sequence annotation, and the name of the actual sequence object in the database.
The TABLE GenerationType allocates a separate database table to keep track of the generation of unique ids. To facilitate the description of the table to be used, the TABLE strategy works hand in hand with the @TableGenerator annotation
Explaining Primary Key Generation Strategies for Hibernate
-Cameron McKenzie