Hi Kevin,
It's not very specific - we used Hibernate 4 for the recordings, I think Spring 3 for the Spring chapter and we probably used either
Java 6 or 7. It doesn't really matter for this course, although if you want to use Hibernate 3, there is a different style of obtaining sessions.
Was also wondering that now EE6 seems to be catching up
Ooh that's controversial - I couldn't possibly comment ;-)
JPA integration the way forwards?
Do you mean is it best to use JPA over Hibernate? I find that projects seem to be divided about this, although in the last couple of years more have moved over to JPA. You can still use JPA with Spring of course - I believe that whether to use Spring/JPA/Hibernate or EJB3/JPA is a bit of a matter of taste. I prefer the former, but we do cover EJB3 integration on the course and it's perfectly usable.
I hope that helps - do ask more if you need it.
Richard.