Rating:  - Nice reference
Mainly this book is for someone who already knows Hibernate and would use this book as a reference and not as a book to learn Hibernate from scratch.
I liked it since it gave some nice examples using Middlegen and XDoclet. I was able to generate all the mappings and POJOs using ant task that used middlegen...
I would recommend this book for someone who wants to pick up few new tricks with Hibernate...
p.s. Used this book costs around 3-4 bucks + shipping... this book definetely worth 6-8 bucks... but i would not pick it up from Barns for $40.
Rating:  - Poorly organized, poorly written
Parts of the book are organized oddly. For example, it gives a complete reference to the mapping files in Chapter 5 without explaining some of the core concepts (e.g., such as how to do one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many mappings). As a result, those items are just words and terms without any understanding of what they mean. Only later in Chapter 7 do we get the explanation for the concepts. Other books, such as the O'Reilly "In a Nutshell" books, are careful to put the reference at the end.
Even then, much of the writing seems rushed without much attention given to coherence. For example, on page 246 it says:
'In this situation, the rule of thumb is that inverse="false" should be set for the side of the relationship with the smallest number of elements changed the most frequently.'
Now think that through carefully and try to decipher what it might mean. Perhaps "smallest" should be "smaller" if there are only two sides? And maybe "most" should be "more" for the same reason. Who knows? The point it the reader shouldn't have to struggle with such core concepts.
I'm happy that I borrowed the book from the library rather than having wasted my own money on it! Addison-Wesley should be ashamed to be associated with this book.
Rating: - Waste of money
If you are interested in the detailed explanation of the concept and model description get "Hibernate in Action", if you are interested in documentation go to www.hibernate.org. This book is just waste of money and most important time.
Rating: - Crap - Regurgitation of the Hibernate.org Docs
This is one of the worst introductions to any Java technology I have ever read. More of an API reference than a guide. The author shows a few open source tools for generating objects and DB schemas, then revisits all the info in the Hibernate docs and tutorial. Don't waste your money like I did.
Rating:  - Doesn't cover standard way of working with Hibernate
After the introduction, the book starts by explaining how to write Hibernate mapping files and use a Hibernate specific ANT task to generate Java source.
It the next chapter, the book explains how to generate Hibernate XML mapping files from XDoclet tags in the Java code.
The third chapter explains how to generate both the mapping files and Java source from a DB schema by using a tool called Middlegen.
I think a better approach would have been to have a chapter explaining how to develop everything from scratch (Java source and XML mapping files), then move on to tools that make your job easier by generating the schema, mapping files and/or the Java source.
Also, the book covers Hibernate 2. Hibernate 3 is already out, although, to be fair, there are no Hibernate 3 books in the market yet and most of the tools that integrate with Hibernate (XDoclet, Middlegen, etc) still generate Hibernate 2 artifacts, however, I expect this to change soon.
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