The Open Source Zone

I bought this book because I thought it would help me get a working example of using Hibernate working quickly. However, I found it completely impossible to get even the first example listed in the book working. The source code provided on their web site doesn't work despite many people complaining that it is broken. Even worse, the source code does not match the book text (I suspect the authors were rushing to make their book listings to read as-if it were Hibernate version 3 compatible but didn't bother to update the sample code), so it's impossible to follow along.

After several hours of frustration, I ended up taking the book back to the bookstore and bought Beginning Hibernate by Dave Mitner instead. It helped me get a working example up quickly and contained much more up-to-date information, and was much more clear.

In short, don't waste your time with this book, buy Beginning Hibernate (or anything else really) instead.

I think the book does what it says. I was able to finish the basic understanding of Hibernate 3 within 2 days flat. The language is really easy and it provides the crux of crucial concepts within 3-4 chapters. Sometimes I have seen that reference books talk too much on all the concepts and I usually get bored till I come to say 11th chapter where real concepts are used.

Chapter 2 in the book is EXCELLENT. Step by step on how to install and setting up and project.

After setting up everything from chapter 2, when you start learning Hibernate, this is what you're going to get:
1. Examples in the book do not match the code
2. The codes aren't complete
3. Authors walk you all over the place. You'll get even more confused after reading this book
4. Sample codes in the book aren't clear

My opinion:
I think the authors wrote this book while doing something else. The ideas are not focus.

...for the book before you buy it. This book does exactly what it was intended to do. It "give(s) readers the 20% of information they need 80% of the time". If you're already a somewhat experienced user of Hibernate and learning the first 20% of it is not your goal, then this book is not for you. Sounds like many people are holding this book accountable for the egregious void of in-depth and recent Hibernate3 books and lack of good documentation on it's own site. Don't burn a good book because hibernate.org doesn't even offer a metadata reference. Although I am referring to the book less over time, I a lot of value from it. If you don't know Hibernate, and want to, buy this book.

This book is a product of confused Authors , it began well but after one week i could'nt get an application running that could retrieve Information from the Database. The Source Code downloaded from the web site was quite different from Book