This chapter will explain two approaches you might use as a structure for your Hibernate application. Both are based on DAO (Data Access Objects). First, I will explain the DAO as defined in the Java blueprints. Then we will discover the general requirements for a Hibernate application.

Finally, we will continue with the examples showing implementations for Java 1.5 with generics and an implementation for older Java versions. I will try to explain the ideas behind each approach to make you better understand what you are doing.