My team is about to build a new product and we are using Hibernate/JPA as the persistence mechanism. There are other book posts on stackoverflow, but I couldn't find one that matched my needs.
My manager will be purchasing books for our team to use as a resource so...
What are the best books about Hibernate and JPA?
(Please list each book suggestion in a separate answer)
(If you already see your book answered, instead of adding it again, just vote it up)
I found Hibernate: A Developer's Notebook by James Elliott very useful when I was first investigating Hibernate, but I guess it depends upon the experience level of your team with Hibernate.
You can't beat "Hibernate in Action" for learning Hibernate. It also serves as an excellent reference and I'd recommend purchasing the PDF version, since it's easier to search. Here's a link to the book's web site at Manning publishing: http://www.manning.com/bauer/.
Oooops ... I just noticed that I have the paper copy of "Hibernate in Action" but the electronic copy of "Java Persistence with Hibernate". That web site is: http://www.manning.com/bauer2/
I am using the Java Persistence with Hibernate book. It is pretty thorough. I used an earlier version of this book (it did not have the JPA stuff) to learn how to use Hibernate myself from scratch. I am sure I have a lot more to learn, but I think its a good book.
I have that particular book, and while it is useful, wasn't it covering Hibernate 2.x which was modified quite a bit for the current 3.x release? (Not to say that it won't get you started, and quickly, but we should point out that it's relatively old.)
Java Persistence with Hibernate is the new edition of Hibernate in Action. It includes all the 3.x features, including JPA, and offers a bonus chapter on Seam, so don't get the old edition :-).
They should really call this book "The Actual Documentation for Hibernate". I'd been using Hibernate for 2 years prior to reading it, and I thought I knew what I was doing, but this book made me realize I'd only skimmed the surface.
This book was co-authored by Gavin King, the author of Hibernate. It's the closest thing to a "Hibernate bible" that you're going to find.
Hibernate in Action is a bit outdated, but still worth the price. Java Persistence with Hibernate is bloated and not as focused.
Pro EJB 3: Java Persistence API is absolutely essential for working with JPA. It was written by one of the spec authors (Mike Keith), and I frequently refer to it. I keep it on my desk next to my computer at work.
It's one of those books where your coworker asks you a question about JPA and then you look it up in the index and the answer is always right there in the text.
There is only one book that I can really recommend and that is JPA2 Pro. A must for every developer using JPA technology.
There is another very good book on JPA 2.0:
Java Persistence with JPA, by Daoqi Yang. It was recently published (April, 2010). The author claims being complete in the coverage of JPA 2.0, and being concise but with many examples. The author has a website to support this book: http://www.yangdaoqi.info/jpa.html
Also Hibernate Made Easy; Simplified Data Persistence with Hibernate & JPA Annotations is a good book.