difference between JPA and Hibernate?

[Satyajeet Kadam]

Q1) Kindly let me know the difference between JPA and Hibernate?

As i as i know JPA is a specification from Sun Microsystem.Hibernate and Top link also providing the implementation of it.This has been done to avoid vendor Locking.

[Ravi Kiran Va]

Both are two different technologies that follow ORM specfications .

[Lester Burnham]

As i as i know JPA is a specification from Sun Microsystem. Hibernate and Top link also providing the implementation of it.

That's correct (except the spec is from the JCP, but that's quibbling over minor differences). Other JPA implementations also exist, like OpenJPA.

Both are two different technologies that follow ORM specfications.

This is not correct: JPA is the specification, Hibernate/TopLink are the implementations.

It should be noted that some implementations (Hibernate, specifically) also have their own API which is different from JPA. Using that would lead to difficulties when considering a switch to a different implementation (the vendor lock-in mentioned above).

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Hibernate provides 2 APIs - one is JPA. So you can use Hibernate's implementation of JPA without vendor lock in if you use those APIs.

[Matthew Brown]

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:Hibernate provides 2 APIs - one is JPA. So you can use Hibernate's implementation of JPA without vendor lock in if you use those APIs.

Is there an advantage to using the non-JPA Hibernate API? Or is it just there for historical reasons?