java - What is the difference between Hibernate and Spring Data JPA

Question

What are the main differences between Hibernate and Spring Data JPA? When should we not use Hibernate or Spring Data JPA? Also, when may Spring JDBC template perform better than Hibernate / Spring Data JPA?

Answer 1

Hibernate is a JPA implementation, while Spring Data JPA is a JPA data access abstraction. Spring Data JPA cannot work without a JPA provider.

Spring Data offers a solution to the DDD Repository pattern or the legacy GenericDao custom implementations. It can also generate JPA queries on your behalf through method name conventions.

With Spring Data, you may use Hibernate, EclipseLink, or any other JPA provider. A very interesting benefit of using Spring or Java EE is that you can control transaction boundaries declaratively using the @Transactional annotation.

Spring JDBC is much more lightweight, and it's intended for native querying, and if you only intend to use JDBC alone, then you are better off using Spring JDBC to deal with the JDBC verbosity.

Therefore, Hibernate and Spring Data are complementary rather than competitors.