title: Hibernate Native vs Hibernate JPA
body: <p>Hibernate website says there is a native Hibernate API as well as an implementation of JPA. What is the difference between the Native API and JPA implementation? Advantages, disadvantages?</p>
  
  <p>I am working on a Spring MVC application, using Tomcat as the container, and MySQL for persistence. I've used Doctrine and Entity for PHP and .NET respectively in the past, using the code first approach. I would like to have something similar with Java. I'm newer to Spring and never used Hibernate. My team would like to use an ORM and Hibernate seems to be the most popular. We're not sure how Hibernate is going to workout or whether we should use native or JPA api. The application will be data driven, data entry, reporting, etc.</p>
  
  <p>I've read that using JPA makes its easier to switch to another JPA implementation, although I don't know if that will be needed or not. </p>