What are best practices to follow with Hibernate framework?

1. Some of the best practices to follow in Hibernate are:

   • Always check the primary key field access, if it’s generated at the database layer then you should not have a setter for this.
   • By default hibernate set the field values directly, without using setters. So if you want hibernate to use setters, then make sure proper access is defined as @Access(value=AccessType.PROPERTY).
   • If access type is property, make sure annotations are used with getter methods and not setter methods. Avoid mixing of using annotations on both filed and getter methods.
   • Use native sql query only when it can’t be done using HQL, such as using database specific feature.
   • If you have to sort the collection, use ordered list rather than sorting it using Collection API.
   • Use named queries wisely, keep it at a single place for easy debugging. Use them for commonly used queries only. For entity specific query, you can keep them in the entity bean itself.
   • For web applications, always try to use JNDI DataSource rather than configuring to create connection in hibernate.
   • Avoid Many-to-Many relationships, it can be easily implemented using bidirectional One-to-Many and Many-to-One relationships.
   • For collections, try to use Lists, maps and sets. Avoid array because you don’t get benefit of lazy loading.
   • Do not treat exceptions as recoverable, roll back the Transaction and close the Session. If you do not do this, Hibernate cannot guarantee that in-memory state accurately represents the persistent state.
   • Prefer DAO pattern for exposing the different methods that can be used with entity bean
   • Prefer lazy fetching for associations