I don't think you need to just learn how to use EclipseLink. EclipseLink is a reference implementation for JPA. There are a number of tutorials on the web that you can read up about regarding JPA. I have written a series of articles for beginners for building web applications and one of the sections deals with JPA (and EclipseLink). If you are interested take a look and I welcome discussion on it to improve it as well as my own understanding.
EDIT: Here's a more direct answer to your question. I hope it helps
There are a number of different download approaches to take for EclipeLink. This is one way:
Download EclipseLink Installer
Extract the eclipselink.jar from the download jlib directory and include it in your projects classpath.
Download the ejb3-persistence.jar and include it in your projects classpath.
I haven't got SQL server myself but you would need to include the sqljdbc jar in your classpath. Don't know what version you are using or if it even matters but you can try this link and download the 1033\sqljdbc_3.0.1301.101_enu.tar.gz file. Extract it and copy the sqljdbc.jar into your projects classpath.
Here's a simple standalone example:
persistence.xml (saved in your META-INF directory in your src folder)
<persistence xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/persistence_1_0.xsd"
version="1.0">
<persistence-unit name="escribs-pu" transaction-type="RESOURCE_LOCAL">
<provider>org.eclipse.persistence.jpa.PersistenceProvider</provider>
<exclude-unlisted-classes>false</exclude-unlisted-classes>
<properties>
<property name="eclipselink.ddl-generation" value="drop-and-create-tables" />
<!-- haven't tested with SQL server so hope the below is correct -->
<property name="eclipselink.jdbc.driver" value="com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver" />
<property name="eclipselink.jdbc.url" value="jdbc:sqlserver://localhost;databaseName=MyDB" />
<property name="eclipselink.jdbc.user" value="myusername" />
<property name="eclipselink.jdbc.password" value="mypassword" />
</properties>
</persistence-unit>
</persistence>
Entity class:
import javax.persistence.Entity;
import javax.persistence.Id;
import javax.persistence.Table;
@Entity
@Table(name="person")
public class Person {
private Long id;
private String name;
@Id
public Long getId() {
return id;
}
public void setId(Long id) {
this.id = id;
}
public String getName() {
return name;
}
public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
}
SimpleTest
import javax.persistence.EntityManager;
import javax.persistence.EntityManagerFactory;
import javax.persistence.EntityTransaction;
import javax.persistence.Persistence;
public class SimpleTest {
public static void main(String[] args) {
EntityManagerFactory emf = Persistence.createEntityManagerFactory("escribs-pu");
Person person = new Person();
person.setId(1L);
person.setName("Clark");
EntityManager em = null;
EntityTransaction tx = null;
try {
em = emf.createEntityManager();
tx = em.getTransaction();
tx.begin();
em.persist(person);
tx.commit();
System.out.println("Person id: " + person.getId());
} catch (RuntimeException e) {
tx.rollback();
throw e;
} finally {
if (em != null && em.isOpen()) {
em.close();
}
}
}
}