What is a JPA implementation?

Question

I\'m getting started with JPA, and I\'m confused as to what exactly the JPA implementation(EclipseLink, TopLink, Hibernate, etc.) does.

I understand the theoretica

Answer 1

JPA itself is just a specification, not a product; it cannot perform persistence or anything else by itself. JPA is just a set of interfaces, and requires an implementation. There are open-source and commercial JPA implementations to choose from and any Java EE 5 application server should provide support for its use. JPA also requires a database to persist to.