Why do I need to configure the SQL dialect of a data source?

Question

When we configure a data source using Hibernate, we should add the hibernate.dialect property (or eclipselink.target-database if you are using Ecli

Answer 1

Dialect means "the variant of a language". Hibernate, as we know, is database agnostic. It can work with different databases. However, databases have proprietary extensions/native SQL variations, and set/sub-set of SQL standard implementations. Therefore at some point hibernate has to use database specific SQL. Hibernate uses "dialect" configuration to know which database you are using so that it can switch to the database specific SQL generator code wherever/whenever necessary.