Jakarta Persistence (JPA : Formerly Java Persistence API) is a Jakarta EE application programming interface specification that describes the management of relational data in enterprise Java applications. Java Persistence API (JPA) is a collection of classes and methods to persistently store the vast amounts of data into a Data Base. Object Relational Mapping (ORM) is the process of converting Java objects to database tables. In other words, this allows us to interact with a relational database without any SQL. The Java Persistence API (JPA) is a specification that defines how to persist data in Java applications. The Java Persistence API (JPA) provides an Object Relational Mapping (ORM) facility to Java developers for managing relational data in Java Applications.
✓ Java Persistence API (JPA) consists of Three Areas :- Java Persistence API (JPA) defined in the javax.persistence package
- Java Persistence Query Language (JPQL)
- Object Relational Mapping Metadata
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 :- JPA 1.0 was released with the specifications of JEE 5 on May 11, 2006.
- JPA 2.0 was released with the specifications of JEE 6 on December 10, 2009.
- JPA 2.1 was released with the specification of JEE 7 on April 22, 2013.
- JPA 2.2 was released with the specification of JEE 7 on June 19, 2017.