Why Hibernate?

• Natural Programming Model: Hibernate lets you develop persistent classes following natural Object-oriented idioms including inheritance, polymorphism, association, composition, and the Java collections framework.
• Transparent Persistence: Hibernate requires no interfaces or base classes for persistent classes and enables any class or data structure to be persistent. Furthermore, Hibernate enables faster build procedures since it does not introduce build-time source or byte code generation or processing. 
• High Performance: Hibernate supports lazy initialization, many fetching strategies, and optimistic locking with automatic versioning and time stamping. Hibernate requires no special database tables or fields and generates much of the SQL at system initialization time instead of runtime. Hibernate consistently offers superior performance over straight JDBC coding.
• Reliability and Scalability: Hibernate is well known for its excellent stability and quality, proven by the acceptance and use by tens of thousands of Java developers. Hibernate was designed to work in an application server cluster and deliver a highly scalable architecture. Hibernate scales well in any environment: Use it to drive your in-house Intranet that serves hundreds of users or for mission-critical applications that serve hundreds of thousands.
• Extensibility: Hibernate is highly customizable and extensible. 
• Comprehensive Query Facilities: Including support for Hibernate Query Language (HQL), Java Persistence Query Language (JPAQL), Criteria queries, and "native SQL" queries; all of which can be scrolled and paginated to suit your exact performance needs.