The full form of JPA is Java Persistence API.

Java Persistence API is a collection of classes and methods to persistently store the vast amounts of data into a database. This tutorial provides you the basic understanding of Persistence (storing the copy of database object into temporary memory), and we will learn the understanding of JAVA Persistence API (JPA).

As a specification, the Java Persistence API is concerned with persistence, which loosely means any mechanism by which Java objects outlive the application process that created them. Not all Java objects need to be persisted, but most applications persist key business objects. The JPA specification lets you define which objects should be persisted, and how those objects should be persisted in your Java applications.

By itself, JPA is not a tool or framework; rather, it defines a set of concepts that can be implemented by any tool or framework. While JPA’s object-relational mapping (ORM) model was originally based on Hibernate, it has since

evolved. Likewise, while JPA was originally intended for use with relational/SQL databases, some JPA implementations have been extended for use with NoSQL datastores. A popular framework that supports JPA with NoSQL is EclipseLink, the reference implementation for JPA 2.2.

JPA and Hibernate

Because of their intertwined history, Hibernate and JPA are frequently conflated. However, like the Java Servlet specification, JPA has spawned many compatible tools and frameworks; Hibernate is just one of them.

Developed by Gavin King and released in early 2002, Hibernate is an ORM library for Java. King developed Hibernate as an alternative to entity beans for persistence. The framework was so popular, and so needed at the time, that many of its ideas were adopted and codified in the first JPA specification.

Today, Hibernate ORM is one of the most mature JPA implementations, and still a popular option for ORM in Java. Hibernate ORM 5.3.8 (the current version as of this writing) implements JPA 2.2. Additionally, Hibernate’s family of tools has expanded to include popular tools like Hibernate Search, Hibernate Validator, and Hibernate OGM, which supports domain-model persistence for NoSQL.