Hibernate is an ORM or object relational mapping library for Java. It also provides framework for mapping OODM or object oriented domain model to a conventional relational database. The direct persistence related database accesses and high level handling functions of Hibernate solves the object relational impedance mismatch problems.

Data query and retrieval facilities are some of the facilities, other than mapping, from java classes to database tables. Hibernate was designed and developed as an alternative to EJB2 style entity beans by Gavin King. Initially it was to offer better persistence abilities than EJB2, and also simplifying complexities as well as add some important and useful features.

Hibernate framework used to persist data from Java environment to database. The Hibernate architecture is minimally designed and it creates a layer between the application and the database. All details like mapping, database connection strings, entity classes and all other details are loaded, and a synchronisation is created between the database and the application by Hibernate.