High-Performance Hibernate Tutorial
I’ve been using Hibernate for almost a decade and I admit it was not an easy journey. This tutorial is actually a summary of my book, whose main goal is to provide guidelines and practical advice for optimizing the data access layer performance while maintaining a strong consistency transactional model.
This material is useful for both beginners and experienced developers, going beyond the reference documentation.
Tips and best practices
- A beginner’s guide to the high-performance-java-persistence GitHub repository
- 14 High-Performance Java Persistence tips
- 9 High-Performance Tips when using MySQL with JPA and Hibernate
- 9 High-Performance Tips when using PostgreSQL with JPA and Hibernate
- How to detect the Hibernate N+1 query problem during testing
- A beginner’s guide to SQL injection and how you should prevent it
- How to store date, time, and timestamps in UTC time zone with JDBC and Hibernate
- The fastest way to update a table row when using Hibernate and Oracle
- How to use database-specific or Hibernate-specific features without sacrificing portability
- JPA providers market share
Bootstrapping
- How to bootstrap Hibernate without the
persistence.xmlconfiguration file - How to bootstrap JPA programmatically without the
persistence.xmlconfiguration file - JDBC Driver Connection URL strings
- How to get access to database table metadata with Hibernate 5
- How to get the entity mapping to database table binding metadata from Hibernate
Mappings
Basic types
- A beginner’s guide to Hibernate Types
- A beginner’s guide to JPA and Hibernate Cascade Types
- Hot to map calculated properties with JPA and Hibernate
@Formulaannotation - How to map calculated properties with Hibernate
@Generatedannotation - How to emulate
@CreatedByand@LastModifiedByfrom Spring Data using the@GeneratorTypeHibernate annotation - How to implement a custom basic type using Hibernate UserType
- What’s new in JPA 2.2 – Java 8 Date and Time Types
- The best way to map a Java 1.8 Optional entity attribute with JPA and Hibernate
- The best way to map an Enum Type with JPA and Hibernate
- How to map a JPA entity to a View or SQL query using Hibernate
JSON
- The hibernate-types open-source project bring extra Hibernate Types (e.g. JSON, ARRAY)
- How to map JSON objects using generic Hibernate Types
- How to store schema-less EAV (Entity-Attribute-Value) data using JSON and Hibernate
- How to map JSON collections using JPA and Hibernate
- How to customize the Jackson ObjectMapper used by Hibernate-Types
- How to customize the JSON Serializer used by Hibernate-Types
ARRAY
Equals and hashCode
- The best way to implement equals, hashCode, and toString with JPA and Hibernate
- How to implement equals and hashCode using the entity identifier (primary key)
- How to implement equals and hashCode using the entity natural identifier
Relationships
- The best way to map a @OneToOne relationship with JPA and Hibernate
- The best way to map a @OneToMany relationship with JPA and Hibernate
- The best way to use the @ManyToMany annotation with JPA and Hibernate
- The best way to map a many-to-many association with extra columns when using JPA and Hibernate
- The best way to map a Composite Primary Key with JPA and Hibernate
- How to map a composite identifier using an automatically @GeneratedValue with JPA and Hibernate
- How to synchronize bidirectional entity associations with JPA and Hibernate
- How to map a @ManyToOne association using a non-Primary Key column
- How to customize an entity association JOIN ON clause with Hibernate
@JoinFormula - How to map a JPA
@ManyToOnerelationship to a SQL query using the Hibernate@JoinFormulaannotation - How to optimize unidirectional collections with JPA and Hibernate
- How do Set and List collections behave with JPA and Hibernate
Advanced mapping techniques
- Fluent API entity building with JPA and Hibernate
- How to map an immutable entity with JPA and Hibernate
- How to map the latest child of a parent entity using Hibernate
@JoinFormula - How to update only a subset of entity attributes using JPA and Hibernate
- How to use external XML mappings files with JPA and Hibernate
- How to encrypt and decrypt data with Hibernate
- The best way to soft delete with Hibernate
- How to fix “wrong column type encountered” schema-validation errors with JPA and Hibernate
- How to audit entity modifications using the JPA
@EntityListeners,@Embedded, and@Embeddableannotations - How to use
@PrePersistand@PreUpdateon Embeddable with JPA and Hibernate
Identifiers
- A beginner’s guide to natural and surrogate database keys
- The best way to map a @NaturalId business key with JPA and Hibernate
- The hi/lo algorithm
- Hibernate and UUID identifiers
- How to use a JVM or database auto-generated UUID identifier with JPA and Hibernate
- Hibernate Identity, Sequence, and Table (Sequence) generator
- A beginner’s guide to Hibernate enhanced identifier generators
- Hibernate pooled and pooled-lo identifier generators
- Why you should never use the TABLE identifier generator with JPA and Hibernate
- Why should not use the AUTO JPA GenerationType with MySQL and Hibernate
- How to replace the TABLE identifier generator with either SEQUENCE or IDENTITY in a portable way
- PostgreSQL SERIAL column and Hibernate IDENTITY generator
- How to combine the Hibernate assigned generator with a sequence or an identity column
- How to implement a custom String-based sequence identifier generator with Hibernate
- MariaDB 10.3 supports database sequences
Inheritance
- The best way to use entity inheritance with JPA and Hibernate
- The best way to map the SINGLE_TABLE inheritance with JPA and Hibernate
- The best way to map the @DiscriminatorColumn with JPA and Hibernate
- How to inherit properties from a base class entity using
@MappedSuperclasswith JPA and Hibernate - How to order entity subclasses by their class type using JPA and Hibernate
Connection management
- The simple scalability equation
- The anatomy of Connection Pooling
- Why you should use FlexyPool
- How to monitor your connection pool with FlexyPool
- How to monitor a Java EE DataSource
- Why you should always use hibernate.connection.provider_disables_autocommit for resource-local JPA transactions
- How does aggressive connection release work in Hibernate
Flushing
- A beginner’s guide to JPA/Hibernate entity state transitions
- A beginner’s guide to flush strategies in JPA and Hibernate
- How does persist and merge work in JPA
- How does AUTO flush strategy work in Hibernate
- How do JPA and Hibernate define the AUTO flush mode
- A beginner’s guide to Hibernate flush operation order
- The anatomy of Hibernate dirty checking mechanism
- How to customize Hibernate dirty checking mechanism
- How to enable bytecode enhancement dirty checking in Hibernate
- How does the bytecode enhancement dirty checking mechanism work in Hibernate 4.3
Fetching
- How do find and getReference EntityManager methods work when using JPA and Hibernate
- A beginner’s guide to Hibernate fetching strategies
- EAGER fetching is a code smell
- The best way to map a projection query to a DTO (Data Transfer Object) with JPA and Hibernate
- The best way to handle the LazyInitializationException
- The best way to lazy load entity attributes using JPA and Hibernate
- ResultSet statement fetching with JDBC and Hibernate
- How to fetch entities multiple levels deep with Hibernate
- The Open Session In View Anti-Pattern
- The hibernate.enable_lazy_load_no_trans Anti-Pattern
- How does MySQL result set streaming perform vs fetching the whole JDBC ResultSet at once
- How does a JPA Proxy work and how to unproxy it with Hibernate
- The best way to fix the Hibernate “HHH000104: firstResult/maxResults specified with collection fetch; applying in memory!” warning message
Concurrency control
- Data knowledge stack
- A beginner’s guide to ACID and database transactions
- How does MVCC (Multi-Version Concurrency Control) work
- How do PostgreSQL advisory locks work
- A beginner’s guide to database locking and the lost update phenomena
- How to prevent lost updates in long conversations
- A beginner’s guide to Dirty Read anomaly
- A beginner’s guide to Non-Repeatable Read anomaly
- A beginner’s guide to Phantom Read anomaly
- A beginner’s guide to read and write skew phenomena
- A beginner’s guide to the Phantom Read anomaly, and how it differs between 2PL and MVCC
- How does database pessimistic locking interact with INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE SQL statements
- How do UPSERT and MERGE work in Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL and MySQL
- Logical vs physical clock optimistic locking
- How to retry JPA transactions after an OptimisticLockException
- How does Hibernate guarantee application-level repeatable reads
- Hibernate collections optimistic locking
- How to address the OptimisticLockException in JPA and Hibernate
- How to prevent OptimisticLockException with Hibernate versionless optimistic locking
- A beginner’s guide to transaction isolation levels in enterprise Java
- A beginner’s guide to Java Persistence locking
- How does LockModeType.OPTIMISTIC work in JPA and Hibernate
- How to fix optimistic locking race conditions with pessimistic locking
- How does LockModeType.OPTIMISTIC_FORCE_INCREMENT work in JPA and Hibernate
- How does LockModeType.PESSIMISTIC_FORCE_INCREMENT work in JPA and Hibernate
- How do LockModeType.PESSIMISTIC_READ and LockModeType.PESSIMISTIC_WRITE work in JPA and Hibernate
- How does CascadeType.LOCK works in JPA and Hibernate
- How to increment the parent entity version whenever a child entity gets modified with JPA and Hibernate
Batching
- Batch processing best practices
- The best way to do batch processing with JPA and Hibernate
- How to batch INSERT and UPDATE statements with Hibernate
- How to batch DELETE statements with Hibernate
- How to customize the JDBC batch size for each Persistence Context with Hibernate
- How to find which statement failed in a JDBC Batch Update
- How to optimize the merge operation using update while batching with JPA and Hibernate
- How to enable multi-row inserts with the PostgreSQL reWriteBatchedInserts configuration property
Queries
- How to improve statement caching efficiency with IN clause parameter padding
- A beginner’s guide to the Hibernate JPQL and Native Query Plan Cache
- How to JOIN unrelated entities with JPA and Hibernate
- How to resolve the Hibernate global database schema and catalog for native SQL queries
- How to map table rows to columns using SQL PIVOT or CASE expressions
- The JPA EntityManager createNativeQuery is a Magic Wand
- Why you should use the Hibernate ResultTransformer to customize result set mappings
- Why you should definitely learn SQL Window Functions
- What’s new in JPA 2.2 – Stream the result of a Query execution
- How to get the actual execution plan for an Oracle SQL query using Hibernate query hints
- How do solve the PostgreSQL :: cast operator issue with JPA and Hibernate
- The best way to use SQL functions in JPQL or Criteria API queries with JPA and Hibernate
Criteria Queries
- JPA Criteria API Bulk Update and Delete
- Why you should always check the SQL statements generated by Criteria API
- The performance penalty of Class.forName when parsing JPQL and Criteria queries
- How does Hibernate handle JPA Criteria API literals
Stored procedures
- How to call Oracle stored procedures and functions with JPA and Hibernate
- How to call SQL Server stored procedures and functions with JPA and Hibernate
- How to call PostgreSQL functions (stored procedures) with JPA and Hibernate
- How to call MySQL stored procedures and functions with JPA and Hibernate
Caching
- A beginner’s guide to Cache synchronization strategies
- Things to consider before jumping to enterprise caching
- Caching best practices
- How does Hibernate store second-level cache entries
- How does Hibernate READ_ONLY CacheConcurrencyStrategy work
- How does Hibernate NONSTRICT_READ_WRITE CacheConcurrencyStrategy work
- How does Hibernate READ_WRITE CacheConcurrencyStrategy work
- How does Hibernate TRANSACTIONAL CacheConcurrencyStrategy work
- How does Hibernate Collection Cache work
- How does Hibernate Query Cache work
- How to use the Hibernate Query Cache for DTO projections
- How to avoid the Hibernate Query Cache N+1 issue
- How to cache non-existing entity fetch results with JPA and Hibernate
Audit
- A beginner’s guide to CDC (Change Data Capture)
- How to extract change data events from MySQL to Kafka using Debezium
- The best way to implement an audit log using Hibernate Envers
Testing
- The minimal configuration for testing Hibernate
- Hibernate integration testing strategies
- How to run database integration tests 20 times faster
- How to run integration tests at warp speed using Docker and tmpfs
- The best way to log JDBC statements
- The best way to detect database connection leaks
- How to install DB2 Express-C on Docker and set up the JDBC connection properties
- How to get started with CockroachDB and Hibernate
If you like these articles, I bet you are going to love my book as well.
Testimonials
.@vlad_mihalcea blog is to #Hibernate and #jpa , as "Effective Java" is to #java. It should be mandatory reading on the subject. It's like the bible for doing #orm with #Hibernate (+ the official docs of course). https://t.co/vTyFudyfA9
— Gerard Hovanessyan (@hovanessyan) March 20, 2018
@BasnerSebastian This is the blog I've talked to you about: http://t.co/t4TyBlRabo by @vlad_mihalcea. Must-read for Hibernate aficionados!
— Lukas Eder (@lukaseder) March 25, 2015
Struggling with problems with JPA & @Hibernate? You should follow @vlad_mihalcea and his blog: https://t.co/77eEqnlSPy
— Edson Yanaga (@yanaga) November 16, 2016
Follow @vlad_mihalcea to learn everything about #Hibernate and #JPA! #SayThanksForFollowing #STFF
— Markus Eisele (@myfear) November 15, 2015
Follow @vlad_mihalcea if you want to use Hibernate the right way https://t.co/WhlEGlXaZy
— Franck Pachot (@FranckPachot) November 22, 2016
Thanks to #Hibernate ninja @vlad_mihalcea, we now can build #SpringData #JPA against all of its versions… 👏👍 https://t.co/Ky7QdjdeeQ
— Oliver Gierke 🥁&👨💻 (@olivergierke) December 7, 2016
As a junior developer (CS student) interested in Java, Spring, Hibernate, and related tech your work has proven invaluable.
— Erik Shafer 🤓 (@Faelor) November 1, 2017
Came back to advanced #ORM stuff after a long time away, I would have probably killed myself without @vlad_mihalcea 's blog
— Michael Tecourt (@michaeltecourt) August 20, 2017
Worth bookmarking this if you work with/are interested in Java, Spring, Hibernate and high performance persistence - https://t.co/5j9xbCXkyH
— Kaspars Žarinovs (@kaspars_z) January 25, 2017