JPA stands for Java Persistence API, which is a Jakarta EE application programming interface specification that describes the management of relational data in enterprise Java applications. It acts as a bridge between object-oriented domain models and relational database systems. JPA is not a tool or framework by itself, but rather a set of concepts that guide implementers. It provides metadata annotations that define the mapping between objects and the database. JPA is used to persist data between Java objects and relational databases.
JPA was initially released on May 11, 2006, and the final release date of the JPA 1.0 specification was on the same day as part of Java Community Process JSR 220. The JPA 2.0 specification was released on December 10, 2009, and the JPA 2.1 specification was released on April 22, 2013. The latest version, JPA 3.1, was released in the spring of 2022 as part of Jakarta EE 10.
JPA is used to reduce the burden of writing codes for relational object management, and it allows easy interaction with the database instance. ORM tools like Hibernate, TopLink, and iBatis implement JPA specifications for data persistence. Hibernate is an implementation of JPA guidelines and helps in mapping Java data types to SQL data types.
In summary, JPA is a specification that defines a set of concepts to guide implementers in managing relational data in enterprise Java applications. It acts as a bridge between object-oriented domain models and relational database systems and provides metadata annotations to define the mapping between objects and the database. JPA is used to persist data between Java objects and relational databases and is implemented by ORM tools like Hibernate, TopLink, and iBatis.
