Spring Boot JPA - Overview

What is JPA?

Java Persistence API is a collection of classes and methods to persistently store the vast amounts of data into a database which is provided by the Oracle Corporation.

Where to use JPA?

To reduce the burden of writing codes for relational object management, a programmer follows the ‘JPA Provider’ framework, which allows easy interaction with database instance. Here the required framework is taken over by JPA.

JPA History

Earper versions of EJB, defined persistence layer combined with business logic layer using javax.ejb.EntityBean Interface.

While introducing EJB 3.0, the persistence layer was separated and specified as JPA 1.0 (Java Persistence API). The specifications of this API were released along with the specifications of JAVA EE5 on May 11, 2006 using JSR 220.

JPA 2.0 was released with the specifications of JAVA EE6 on December 10, 2009 as a part of Java Community Process JSR 317.

JPA 2.1 was released with the specification of JAVA EE7 on April 22, 2013 using JSR 338.

JPA Providers

JPA is an open source API, therefore various enterprise vendors such as Oracle, Redhat, Ecppse, etc. provide new products by adding the JPA persistence flavor in them. Some of these products include −

Hibernate, Ecppsepnk, Toppnk, Spring Data JPA, etc.