How can an object-oriented programmer get his/her head around database-driven programming?

Question

I have been programming in C# and Java for a little over a year and have a decent grasp of object oriented programming, but my new side project requires a database-driven model.

Answer 1

Frameworks such as

1. Hibernate http://www.hibernate.org/
2. JPA http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2EE/jpa/

can help you to smoothly solve this problem of inheritance. e.g. http://www.java-tips.org/java-ee-tips/enterprise-java-beans/inheritance-and-the-java-persistenc.html