Rating: 

After 1 night of working through the examples, I was able to apply the basic lessons into a simple application I was building. I felt that this book was worth a LOT more than the price I paid, because now I have a very powerful tool at my disposal that I feel I have a good understanding and grip of.

Hibernate is an awesome piece of technology. It's especially useful if you find that you are spending 90% of your time writing code that puts data into the database or getting it out. Doing web application, I have come to this conclusion head on.

If your tired of JDBC, this book is for you!

So many project I have worked on where we could of rolled out to market MUCH faster and with less bugs if we had access to such tools, I definately won't disregard this tool in future projects.

I will also add, James has a very organized mind and it shows in the way he presents his material. He has very thurough and gets to the point of what you need to know. I definately will keep an eye out for future books by this author.