Hey everyone! 👋

This week was all about diving deep into Spring ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) using Hibernate — and honestly, it felt like unlocking another big puzzle piece in my Spring Framework learning journey. 🚀

Coming from handling basic JDBC operations last week, moving to ORM felt both exciting and a little overwhelming at first — but once I understood the why behind it, everything started falling into place!

Here’s a complete breakdown of my learning experience — straight from a student/learner's perspective. Let's go! 👨‍💻

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🌟 What is Spring ORM (and Why Hibernate)?

Before getting into Spring ORM, I first had to understand what ORM actually is.

In simple terms:

ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) is a technique that allows us to map Java objects (classes) to database tables — without writing messy SQL all the time.

Hibernate is one of the most popular ORM frameworks — and Spring integrates it beautifully through Spring ORM.

The biggest advantage?
✅ I can now work with Java classes instead of worrying about manual SQL queries, result sets, and error-prone JDBC code.
✅ Less boilerplate, more business logic. 🎯

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🔥 What I Learned This Week

1. Setting Up Hibernate with Spring

The first thing I learned was how to configure Hibernate with Spring:

• Adding Hibernate + MySQL dependencies.

• Configuring SessionFactory bean.

• Setting up hibernate.cfg.xml or Java-based Hibernate configurations.

• Creating an Entity class (POJO) mapped to a database table.

Key takeaway: Spring makes Hibernate integration so much smoother compared to doing it manually!

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2. Entity Classes and @Entity Annotation

In Hibernate, classes are mapped to database tables using annotations like:

@Entity
@Table(name = "student")
public class Student {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private int id;
    private String name;
}

No more writing SQL to create or map tables manually (at least for simple use cases)!

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3. Basic CRUD with Hibernate + Spring ORM

Of course, just setting things up isn’t enough.
So, I practiced full CRUD operations:

• Create → Saving new students into the database.

• Read → Fetching student records.

• Update → Updating details like name, age, etc.

• Delete → Removing student records.

The cool thing? All done through Hibernate's Session API, but managed via Spring's dependency injection. 🤯

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4. Session and Transaction Management

One thing that confused me initially was how Hibernate sessions and transactions are managed.
After working on a few examples, I understood:

• Open a Session from SessionFactory.

• Begin a Transaction.

• Perform operations (save, update, delete).

• Commit or rollback if something goes wrong.

Spring takes care of a lot of boilerplate here, especially if we use declarative transaction management (@Transactional).

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5. Hands-on Mini Project: Student-Book Management Console App 📚

Instead of just writing random CRUD methods, I decided to build something simple to put everything I learned into practice:

➡️ Console-based Student Record Management System

• Add new students.

• Update student details.

• Delete student records.

• View all students.

Nothing fancy — just a pure console app — but it helped me connect all the dots and realize where Hibernate ORM truly shines! 🙌

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📂 Code Repositories (All Hands-On Practice)

All the codes I practiced this week are available publicly on GitHub:

🔸 Spring ORM Practice Repo
(Where I practiced configurations, CRUD, and Hibernate basics)
👉 https://github.com/Arkadipta-Kundu/springORMusingHibernate

🔸 Student-Book Management Console Project
(Where I applied ORM concepts in a mini real-world style project)
👉 https://github.com/Arkadipta-Kundu/student_book

If you’re learning Spring ORM too, feel free to check them out!
I kept them clean and beginner-friendly. 💬

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🚀 What’s Next for Me?

Now that I have a basic understanding of how Spring integrates with ORM and Hibernate, it’s time to move up the ladder!

🔜 Next Target:
Learning Spring MVC (Model-View-Controller)
→ Building web apps with Spring.
→ Understanding Controllers, Views, Models in-depth.

Super excited because now I'll finally start working on web-based backend development in Spring! 🎯

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🥜 In a Nutshell (TL;DR)

• Learned about Spring ORM and Hibernate for database operations.

• Understood Entity mapping, Session management, and Transaction handling.

• Practiced full CRUD operations using Hibernate + Spring.

• Built a mini console project to apply learnings practically.

• All code is available on GitHub (links above!).

• Next goal → Spring MVC and web application development! 🚀

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Thanks a lot for reading my learning journey so far! 🙏
If you’ve got any tips, resources, or projects related to Spring MVC — feel free to share them with me! Would love to hear from you and learn more! 🎯