Useful Explanation: "iBATIS, Hibernate, and JPA: Which is right for you?", Strange Conclusion

The JavaWorld's article "iBATIS, Hibernate, and JPA: Which is right for you?", explains really well the concepts behind iBatis and Hibernate. I'm not fully agreed with the explanation of JPA. JPA is nothing else then an abstraction layer, which encapsulates Hibernate, TopLink, openJPA or JPOX. You only have to rely on the API and not the SPI (Service Provider Interface). JPA is enough for most use cases, everything else can be usually solved with the proprietary extensions of the particular SPI/provider/"driver". From the "simplicity" point of view I would say the following:

• JPA is the simplest solution. The amount of XML is minimal. It is dry. For the simplest example you have only to know two annotations: @Entity, @Id. See: EJB 3 Persistence (JPA) For Absolute Beginners - Or Create Read Update Delete (CRUD) in 2 Minutes And Two (library) Jars
• Hibernate: I would differentiate, whether you are going to use Hibernate with the "classic" XML configuration, or the annotation driven approach. The first case is harder to maintain, the latter very similar to JPA.
• iBatis is the most powerful, but not that simple. It comes with highest amount of XML-configuration, which has to be maintained during the whole lifecycle. The tool support is rather weak. It differs sematically from Hibernate and JPA already on the conceptual level; it is more comparable to DAOs, than ORM. Fetched objects are immediately detached, and have to be merged after every modification. This is very different to JPA and Hibernate.

Comparing JPA with Hibernate, is like comparing JDBC with e.g. native Java DB / Derby drivers. The first is standardized, the second one more powerful. In my opinion: you should always start with the standard. Standard means: more than one vendor / provider.

The article is still interestingand readworthy, I have only problems with the conclusion :-)