Hibernate in Action
Authors: Gavin King, Christian Bauer
Amazon info
Hibernate in Action marked my first foray into the "In Action" series and I was quite pleased. The book provides the basic "how-to", but more importantly the "why" and insights from real-world experience. I had some experience with Hibernate before reading this book and this greatly deepened my understanding. It also has some chapters that are beyond my current level of understanding - which means that I still have much to learn from it.
My first computer books were the Wrox series and they were a great fit for my Microsoft-based world view at the time. I eventually migrated to O'Reilly for more J2EE oriented material, but based on HIbernate in Action, I will now be looking first to the "in Action" series.
One significant shortcoming to this book is that the index is rather sparse and not very useful - I found myself consulting the table of contents and marking pages on my own. Also, the "In Action" series seems to be a bit behind the times. Hibernate In Action covers version 2.x, not the 3.x release. Along these lines, the current Struts in Action is from 2002 - which is why I didn't purchase it.
Recommended for all developers who are working on projects that are at least a year old.