How does Hydrate compare with O/R frameworks like EJB3 and Hibernate?
O/R mapping frameworks such as these focus on taking an object model that you have and saving it to a relational database. The starting point is the object model and the problem is ‘how do I persist this object model into a relational model’. Hydrate’s focus is the other way around: ‘how to I take this relational data or XML data that I have been given and work with it through an object model of my choice’. That is not to say that you can’t do this with other frameworks: Hibernate provides a rich toolset for mapping native SQL queries as well as reading and writing XML, however, this is not its focus, and as such you will get better performance and flexibility from Hydrate.
