What is the Java Persistence API (JPA)?

The Java Persistence API (JPA) is a standard API for accessing databases from within Java applications. The main advantage of JPA over JDBC (the older Java API for interacting with databases) is that in JPA data is represented by classes and objects rather than by tables and records as in JDBC. Using plain old Java objects (POJO) to represent persistent data can significantly simplify database programming.

A JPA implementation (sometimes referred to as a JPA provider) is needed in order to interact with a relational database such as Oracle, DB2, SQL Server or MySQL. The popular JPA implementations are Hibernate, TopLink, EclipseLink, Open JPA and DataNucleus. These implementations are Object Relational Mapping (ORM) tools. The mapping bridges between the data representation in the relational database (as tables and records) and the representation in the Java application (as classes and objects).

ObjectDB is the only database management system with built in support of the Java Persistence API (JPA). By interacting with ObjectDB using standard JPA you can keep your application portable. The unique benefit of using ObjectDB is that the overhead of an intermediate ORM layer is eliminated. That simplifies and accelerates the development process and makes your application run much faster.