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 is a Java API specification which describes the management of relational data in applications using Java Platform. You can think JPA as a set of Rules, and hence it can not do any concrete work for you but helps you to standardize your implementation.

So you need concrete implementation which will implements JPA (set of rules). Hibernate, OpenJPA are few of famous JPA implementations.